Sarah DeWitt Brooks- Artist Teacher
Sixth Grade- Abstract Emotional Paintings
Curriculum Connection: 6th grade Language Arts
Category: PAINTING
Concept: Emotional Expression
Components: Abstraction, Texture, Color, Line
Objectives:
1. Lead a Discussion- Questioning and Review: Ask students to remind you what the term abstract means. Can something abstract be recognizable? Ask students to help you define non-representational art. What is representation? What is non-representation? Can you identify what is in the picture? If there are no identifiable objects in a non-representational work, what might there be instead? Help students understand that abstract art can include representational and non-representational artwork and discuss the next two lessons by describing the assignments using these terms. Use interactive Power Point game if possible to lead this discussion. Otherwise, use printed reproductions to lead discussion.
2. Focus on the Reproductions- Directed Looking: Displaying one reproduction at a time, ask students to tell you what they see in each work. After discussing each work, display them on the board so that students can see multiple images of non-representational work in different styles. Encourage students to compare and contrast the different reproductions. Ask students if any of the artworks make them feel a specific emotion. If so, what about the painting do they think makes them feel that emotion.
3. Present the Problem- Review Checkpoints: Explain that students should choose an emotion that they have difficulty describing in words or images. Ask students to use colors and marks that they feel help them to express this emotion. If students feel frustrated with depicting just one emotion, ask them to try telling a story with a variety of different marks and painting techniques within the same painting.
4. Guide Students' Work- Independent Practice Time: Encourage students to support their emotional idea with painting techniques that feel appropriate. Encourage students to fill their entire page with color and lines. Remind students to refer to the painting techniques chart for assistance. Students should be encouraged to start with only one color at a time, creating large blocks of color to fill the entire background first, then move toward using other painting techniques and mark-making.
5. Clean-up- Direct clean-up: Students should put their paintings on the drying rack as they finish, then clean their table area and tidy the paint station area.
6. Closure- Evaluative Writing: After students finish painting, they should be encouraged to write a description of how they used the colors and marks in their painting to visually describe a specific emotion, and why they made these choices. Students should describe what they felt was the most successful part of their painting, and what the thought was least successful, including how they might change the painting if they did the assignment again.
Evaluation Criteria:
- Write narratives, descriptions and explanations.
- Participate in group discussions.
- The student will use visual memory skills to produce a work of art.
- The student will demonstrate inquiry skills and appropriate art vocabulary for describing works of art, responding to works of art, interpreting works of art, and evaluating works of art.
- The student will discuss the ideas and emotions expressed in works of art using appropriate art vocabulary.
- The student will describe orally and in writing, the means by which visual art evokes sensory and emotional responses.
Category: PAINTING
Concept: Emotional Expression
Components: Abstraction, Texture, Color, Line
Objectives:
- Students will create a non-representational painting depicting an emotion.
- Students will understand the definition of representational and non-representational art.
- Students will use more than one brushstroke or painting technique in their painting.
- Students will write a description/explanation of their painting.
- 125 3" x 5" index cards
- 25 boxes of crayons
- 18" x 24" paper
- paint stations
- Reproduction of abstract-expressionist artworks such as:
- Reconciliation Elegy- Robert Motherwell
- Improvisation 31(Sea Battle)- Wassily Kandinsky
- Small Worlds I- Wassily Kandinsky
- Number I (Lavender Mist)-Jackson Pollock (and other works)
- Orange and Tan- Mark Rothko
- Abstract
- Representational
- Non-representational
- Texture
1. Lead a Discussion- Questioning and Review: Ask students to remind you what the term abstract means. Can something abstract be recognizable? Ask students to help you define non-representational art. What is representation? What is non-representation? Can you identify what is in the picture? If there are no identifiable objects in a non-representational work, what might there be instead? Help students understand that abstract art can include representational and non-representational artwork and discuss the next two lessons by describing the assignments using these terms. Use interactive Power Point game if possible to lead this discussion. Otherwise, use printed reproductions to lead discussion.
2. Focus on the Reproductions- Directed Looking: Displaying one reproduction at a time, ask students to tell you what they see in each work. After discussing each work, display them on the board so that students can see multiple images of non-representational work in different styles. Encourage students to compare and contrast the different reproductions. Ask students if any of the artworks make them feel a specific emotion. If so, what about the painting do they think makes them feel that emotion.
3. Present the Problem- Review Checkpoints: Explain that students should choose an emotion that they have difficulty describing in words or images. Ask students to use colors and marks that they feel help them to express this emotion. If students feel frustrated with depicting just one emotion, ask them to try telling a story with a variety of different marks and painting techniques within the same painting.
4. Guide Students' Work- Independent Practice Time: Encourage students to support their emotional idea with painting techniques that feel appropriate. Encourage students to fill their entire page with color and lines. Remind students to refer to the painting techniques chart for assistance. Students should be encouraged to start with only one color at a time, creating large blocks of color to fill the entire background first, then move toward using other painting techniques and mark-making.
5. Clean-up- Direct clean-up: Students should put their paintings on the drying rack as they finish, then clean their table area and tidy the paint station area.
6. Closure- Evaluative Writing: After students finish painting, they should be encouraged to write a description of how they used the colors and marks in their painting to visually describe a specific emotion, and why they made these choices. Students should describe what they felt was the most successful part of their painting, and what the thought was least successful, including how they might change the painting if they did the assignment again.
Evaluation Criteria:
- Students will be able to identify the difference between representational and non-representational art.
- Students will create a non-representational image depicting an emotional experience.
- Students will use at least two painting techniques in their painting.
- Students will write about their artwork, describing what their painting looks like and explaining their use of colors, lines and textures to express their chosen emotion.