Sample Units - select links at left for more units
Intro Art Unit 4: Color and Communication-Symbolic Color Self Portrait
This unit is centered on one of the reasons why we make art, to explore our own humanity and human identity. It focuses on symbolic meanings of color. Color is one of the strongest and most visceral communication tools artists can use. It directly affects our emotions and may even affect us physically. The concept of art as metaphor for one’s deepest thoughts and beliefs is experienced through verbalization of what their own “inner” and “outer” colors symbolize to the student.
Students should leave this unit with a deep understanding of how color affects us in art and in our world. They should be able to discuss those affects in both art and daily life.
This is the first of a series of drawing units, designed for first semester drawing. The series is designed to teach observation, design and drawing technique as well as develop thinking processes. The units include explicit teaching in processes designed to help students “think like an artist”, that is to delve below the surface to use art to explore, develop and communicate personal and broader meaning.
Because it is the first unit of the semester and part of the goal is to help students feel at ease with the technical drawing components of the course, this unit stresses technical abilities more than meaning making skills. Following units will include more meaning-making process development.
Advanced Draw Paint: Pastel on Mixed Media: Layers of Myself
For visual meaning making to be successful, students must develop idea generation skills as well as master technical art skills. In this case the skills are practice in observing contours and proportions, in composition and from both an aesthetic stance and to communicate meaning, and use of value to model form. New techniques added to those are, a new medium and seeing value in color (i.e. it isn’t enough to change color, one must also be aware of the darkness and lightness of color [value] and use it just as one would use value in a black and white image.) Art criticism, aesthetics, and art history are woven into the unit as students interpret ideas and feelings communicated in self-portraits from varied cultures and times.
Theconcept of art as metaphor for our deepest thoughts and beliefs is experienced through the verbalization of what their own collage ground and self-portrait composition portrays to the student, and reflections in the student’s visual journal
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