Name Letter Art

Well here we are…wrapping up my first year of blogging.  

As always, the school year flew by!  It has been so gratifying to share ideas with other art education lovers and reflect on what works and doesn’t work with each of the projects I’ve posted. I truly feel it has made me a better educator. I find myself really thinking through each aspect of a project when writing about it and seeing if I can make it better for my students…and trying to create interesting and unique content in the process. 

This final post of the year is dear to my heart because it is only due to my variety of age groups that I can even write about it! 

As an experiment, 

I presented the same project

(with variations) to 4th graders and Art 2 students (sophomores).  It was really neat to see the growth (as there would obviously be in 6 years worth of development) in artistic sensibility that came through!!   

The project itself is simple.  I have a deep love for typography and a genuine respect for its place in our culture. Now more than ever, with our inundation from social media, websites, and computer culture…not to mention advertising, television, signage, etc. etc. etc...we are completely “fonted out!” 

So I ask students to create their name (or names) or a word (or short phrase) in an overlapped, interesting composition.  Older kids need to use lots of different letter styles, younger kids are shown how to draw a letter with a line and then draw around it to create the block letter style like their writing.  Both groups are asked to incorporate a crazy amount of pattern and color to give these letter designs a lot of pop and energy. They are challenged to FILL the page with letters and patterns.  We use 12x18 paper and layered colored pencils to complete the artwork.

 This project was a success with both age levels. Its a great way to help them notice the lettering world around them and improve their skills at the same time. Its also one of those "everyone is successful" projects which are nice to have now and then.

That's it for the year!

I look forward to recharging this summer and coming back excited for year 23!!  Woo-hoooo!

Happy Summer!!!

A Creative Challenge

I like to start the year with a Creative Challenge designed for all of my high school classes.  This is a small, simple, fun project that warms up their brains, gets their creative juices flowing and prepares them to dive into their individual curriculums.  

This year, we focused on Jasper Johns and the use of letters and numbers in his work. I had seen an interesting lesson plan in School Arts a couple of years ago, so I simplified, modified and shortened it for our needs.

1)  I asked students to choose one letter or number from a font that they found interesting. 

2)  They prepared a background by using pieces of phone book pages ripped, cut and glued to a piece of tagboard in whatever way they saw fit, giving their work some texture.  

3)  After drawing their letter large on a piece of sketch paper and cutting it out, students traced the letter on the background.  (We did it this way because the phone book page paper rips easily when trying to erase.)  

We looked at Jasper Johns' work and talked about the treatments he used:  layering of colors, textures and patterns that make the composition interesting.  

4)  I asked students to develop their own style based on this idea using watercolors, markers and colored pencils.  

This two day project was a great way to start the year, quickly get some new artwork on our display board in the hallway and rev their engines for the bigger projects to come.  It also has many options for developing it into a larger piece or using it for other grade levels.  I LOVE flexible projects like that!  I hope your year is off to a great start!