I have long been inspired by art projects that give you a daily challenge to live up to (hence my current “One new artwork every school day” challenge.) I am fascinated with the Skull Challenge that Noah Scalin did starting June 4, 2007. He made a skull a day for a year! He made his 365th skull on June 2, 2008 (and even posted a bonus skull the day after, since it was a leap year!) Since that time, many others have taken up the “skull a day” cause and done their own challenges. See http://skulladay.blogspot.com/ for more information and inspiration.
I wanted to give my students a (very) small taste of a challenge like this by asking them to choose an object and create 8 artworks in 8 days. This could obviously be done for longer periods of time, but due to some other schedule restrictions, the 8 day time frame worked perfectly for us (and the number wasn’t too overwhelming to them.) I did this project with high school students, but I really think it would work for almost any age.
I gave them a few guidelines:
* No skulls - its been done! Be original!
* Use at least 6 different media.
* At least two of the creations must be 3 dimensional.
* At least one of the creations must involve other people.
* If a creation is temporary, take a photo of it.
* Choose sizes that work best for each individual idea.
After looking at some examples of artworks on Noah’s blog, we talked about how planning is essential to the success of this project. Some works might only take a few minutes, but you would need to make sure you have your necessary supplies. Others might take a while and need to be worked on for more than a day. Creative ideas and uses of materials were highly encouraged.
I liked this project so much because it really pushed kids to get out of their box and also manage their time wisely. Also: even if their drawing skills were not terribly strong, they could still come up with interesting ideas and materials to be successful.
Who doesn’t love a good challenge!?
Happy creating!
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