My Philosophy of Art Education
In today’s world of ever changing technologies, children are learning more about the world in which they live, earlier and earlier. As an art educator, it is of importance to me to show how relevant the value of art education is in a student’s development.
An arts education promotes critical thinking skills, increases problem-solving skills, and is directly related to improving linguistic, logical, mathematical, and spatial intelligences. My aim is to provide an understanding for the process of art making, art history, aesthetics, technology, and the roles and functions of art in cultures and societies. Through exposure to theses things, I wish for my students to discover their creative nature and the gift of sharing what they have learned about the arts with others.

Here is the silhouette I create for my original idea. Stay tuned for the example of my newest lesson plan.




Artist: Rebekah Edmonds

My Silhouette Lesson Plan

Grade Level: 6-8

Title: Silhouettes/Chinese Paper Cutting

Brief History and Background:

A silhouette is defined as an outline of a solid object that is filled with some uniform color. This color is most often black and is projected against a white background. However, other cultures use a variety of colors when creating their artwork.

Silhouettes can date back as far back as the Stone Age when they were found in cave paintings: http://www.jimhopper.com/paleo.html

Throughout the years, the art of making silhouettes has been created in many cultures and has taken on more complex forms. In the Chinese culture, silhouette paper cutting is a traditional form of art. Paper cutting came after the invention of paper in the Han Dynasty. It once became one of the main forms of art, and was popular to the people of the time; even in royal families ladies were also judged by the ability at paper cutting.

Pennsylvania Standards:
• 9.1.4.A Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities
• 9.1.4.B Recognize, know, use and demonstrate a variety of appropriate arts elements and principles to produce, review and revise original works in the arts
• 9.1.4.C Recognize and use fundamental vocabulary within each of the art forms

NJ Core Curriculum Standards:
• Standard1.1 D The Creative Process: All students will demonstrate an understanding of the elements and principles that govern the creation of works of art in dance, music, theatre, and visual art.
• Standard 1.2 History of the Arts and Culture: All students will understand the role, development, and influence of the arts throughout history and across cultures.
• Standard 1.3 D Performing: All students will synthesize skills, media, methods, and technologies that are appropriate to creating, performing, and/or presenting works of art in dance, music, theatre, and visual art.

NETS
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments. Teachers:
• c. promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.


Goal: To create an original paper cut design inspired by the work of traditional Chinese paper cutting.

Objectives:

• Students will enhance their perceptual skills.
• Students will refine their fine motor skills through the act of cutting
and carving paper.
• Students will increase their knowledge of symmetry and positive/negative
space in a work of art.

Resource Materials/Visual Aides:

• http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa020900b.htm
• http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa020900g.htm
• http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa020900c.htm
• http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa020900d.htm
• http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa020900h.htm
• http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa020900e.htm
• http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/s/silhouette.html



Supplies/Materials:

• 9x12 construction paper in various colors and white
• scissors/exacto knives
• glue sticks
• visual aides (images and video of Chinese paper cuts)

Teacher Preparation:
Ahead of time, teacher will prepare a sample of the project creating his/her own design. Project design should be prepared in at least two different colors so that students can see an example of a silhouette in black and also another color variation of the project design. Teacher should also make sure that the blades in the exacto knives are securely fastened in the holder so as to avoid blades falling out when students begin to use them.
When students enter the art room, images of various Chinese paper cuts could be playing on a projector to stimulate the interest of the students. Once students are settled, all questions could be answered about the project they will be working on that day.

Introduction:
Teacher will begin lesson by asking students what they think they are seeing on the projector. Teacher will then tell students that they are looking at samples of a Chinese folk art called Paper Cutting. Teacher will then give students a brief history of the folk art as the students view the various images on the screen. She will point out to students to subject matter of everyday life. Next, she will talk to students about positive and negative space, commenting to students that the space between the lines is just as interesting to look at as the lines themselves.
Teacher will then view vocabulary to students, pointing to the vocabulary words on the board. Teacher will first discuss the word silhouette, symmetry, and positive/negative space. Next, teacher will tell students that they are going to create their own Chinese paper cut silhouettes with a subject matter of something from nature: birds, flowers, trees, fish, etc.

Teach:
Teacher will demonstrate to students how to create a symmetrical design by folding a piece of paper in half and creating a small design. She will then cut out the design and open to paper to show students that what you cut will show up on both sides of the paper. Next, she will show students how to create a design that is connected to another part of a shape so that the shape doesn’t completely fall out.
As teacher works, she will demonstrate to students how to properly use an exacto knife remembering to keep their free hand back while they are cutting. Teacher will then cut a shape out completely to show students that if they want to put the cut out shape into part of the negative space of the design, they can. Finally teacher will take the positive cut out shape and carefully glue it to a piece of white paper to show students the contrast of colors.

Directions:
• Hand out black/colored construction paper to students. Tell student to fold the 9x12 paper in half like a book
• Have students draw a border on the half paper.
• Next, have students draw their designs on the paper remembering to make sure that all lines are connected to each other. Also, encourage students to create small shapes within larger shapes for detail.
• When student are ready to cut, make sure to keep paper folded to ensure a symmetrical design.
• Follow the lines to cut out the shapes using scissors for larger shapes and exacto knives for smaller shapes.
• Once the design has been completely cut out, place the colored cut out paper onto a white paper for a beautiful contrast of color.


Critique/Evaluation/Assessment:
Those students who demonstrate a clear understanding of the lesson will:
-Follow teacher instruction and use tool properly/carefully.
-Use creativity to create an original paper cut.
-Use colored paper to enhance design.
-Create a symmetrical design.
-Utilize positive and negative space in creating an interesting design.

Time Budget:
-Lesson is to be completed in two 40 minute class periods.
-All supplies come from the art classroom. (Exacto knives are optional)
Pointed scissors are sufficient for simple designs.

Vocabulary:
• Silhouette-an outline of a solid object that is filled with some uniform color.
• Positive space- Space in an artwork that is filled with something, such as lines, designs, colour, or shapes.
• Negative space- Empty space, surrounded and shaped so that it acquires a sense of form or volume.
• Symmetrical-the same on both sides.

Safety Concerns:
-Careful attention should be paid to students as they use exacto knives. Teacher should remind students to cut slowly and carefully at all times.

Bibliography/References:
• http://en.mimi.hu/finearts/positive_space.html
• http://www.jimhopper.com/paleo.html
• http://www.state.nj.us/education/cccs/2009/final.htm
• http://www.education-world.com/standards/state/nj/index.shtml#fine

Here are some resources that can be used to view silhouette artists:

The art of Kara Walker-contemporary silhouette artist
• http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker

The art of Kathryn-silhouette artist who does instant portraits using paper and scissors
• http://www.bubbygram.com/silhouettes.htm

The art of Peter Callesen-amazing paper cutting artist
• http://www.petercallesen.com/index/index2.html

eLecture

Screaming for Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch, born to Christian Munch, a medical officer and Laura Cathrine Bjølstad in Norway on December 12, 1863, was the second of five children. Both he and his favorite sister, Johanne Sophie (born 1862) were said to have gotten their artistic talent from their mother. When Edvard was only 6 years old, his mother died of tuberculosis. Nine years later, Sophie also died of the same disease. This left Edvard in the care of his father and his aunt Karen, who raised Edvard and his siblings.

As a child, Edvard spent much of his free time drawing. Because his father's military pay was very low, the family moved frequently from one flat to another. Edvard would create many of his earlier drawing and paintings in the interior of those flats.

By the age of 17, Munch began to focus on his paintings. As he struggled to define his own style as an artist, Edvard experimented with creating paintings in both the naturalist and impressionist styles of art, where the emphasis was on light, movement, and ordinary subject matter.

Eventually Edvard did find his style as he became one of the most well known artists of the expressionist movement. This cultural movement of art focused on creating work that expressed elements of anguish, brooding, and pain based on personal obsessions and grief. His later works became more and more personalized with images relating mostly to illness and death.

Munch held an exhibition in 1892 that shocked the public so much that the show was closed. Munch's most famous painting "The Scream", and "The Sick Child" demonstrate the trauma that Munch underwent when he witnessed the death of his mother and sister to tuberculosis. Many of the Munch's paintings convey limp figures, hidden faces, threatening shapes looming, brooding houses, sexual anxieties, and innocent sufferers. Overall the moods of his works are meloncholic and intense. Edvard Munch was hospitalized when his anxiety became too serious and he returned to Norway in 1909. Edvard Munch died in Oslo in 1944 and left significant works that were simple, vigorous and direct in style, which worked as important forces for later modern graphic art.


Painted in 1893, The Scream is Munch's most famous work and one of the most recognizable paintings in all art. It has been widely interpreted as representing the universal anxiety of modern man.[45] Painted with broad bands of garish color and highly simplified forms, and employing a high viewpoint, the agonized figure is reduced to a garbed skull in the throes of an emotional crisis. With this painting, Munch met his stated goal of “the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self”.[46] Munch wrote of how the painting came to be:

I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature.[47]

He later described the personal anguish behind the painting, “for several years I was almost mad…You know my picture, ‘’The Scream?’’ I was stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood… After that I gave up hope ever of being able to love again.”[48]





Did You Know?......

• That there is mysterious graffiti scribbled within a streak of the sky in Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream (1893)? No one knows whether it was Munch himself who wrote it, or if a disgruntled visitor to one of his early exhibitions scribbled the pencil inscription onto the painting itself.
But the fact remains that, for whatever reason, Munch never removed it from his now famous painting, though he must have been aware of it. What does the graffiti say? In Norwegian: “Could only have been painted by a madman”.

Source Reinhold Heller, “‘Could Only Have Been Painted by a Madman’–Or Could It?”, Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul, New York: MoMA, 2006.

• On February 12, 1994, the same day as the opening of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, four men broke into the National Gallery and stole its version of Scream, leaving a note reading "Thanks for the poor security".[7] The painting had been moved down to a second-story[8] display as part of the Olympic festivities, and the presence of international media covering the games made the theft a sensation.[9] An early claim of responsibility by a Norwegian anti-abortion group turned out to be false. After the gallery refused a ransom demand of USD $1 million in March 1994, Norwegian police set up a sting operation with assistance from the British Police (SO10) and the Getty Museum, and the painting was recovered undamaged on May 7, 1994.[10] In January 1996, four men were convicted in connection with the theft, including Pål Enger, who in 1988 had been convicted of stealing Munch's Vampire.[11] However, they were released on appeal on legal grounds: the British agents involved in the sting operation had entered Norway under false identities.[12]

• In 2004 a version of “The Scream” was stolen from the Munch Museum in Norway by two men wearing dark ski masks. Two hours later, less than a mile away, the police found shattered wooden frames and glass from the stolen works -- a discovery that caused art experts to fear that the two treasures might already have been damaged. Three months later -- after the government refused to pay a $1 million ransom demand -- four Norwegian men were arrested in an elaborate sting operation in which British undercover agents from Scotland Yard posed as representatives of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and offered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure the painting and return it to the National Gallery in Oslo, said Leif A. Lier, the lead detective on the case and a former assistant police chief in Oslo.




Activity

Materials
• White drawing paper 12x18
• Rulers
• Pencils and erasers
• Colored Pencils, crayons, markers
• Paints, brushes, water
(students can choose any medium or teacher can choose for students depending circumstances of the class)
• Image of the Scream

1. Share this information on Edvard Munch and The Scream with students.
2. Show the painting to students and open up a discussion about what feelings the painting expresses.

-Here are some possible questions to open up the discussion:
• What colors do you see in this painting?
• What kind of mood does those colors express? Happy, sad, etc.
• What kind of lines do you see? How do the lines in the image help to set the mood of the picture?
• What do you think this man is feeling/thinking?
• Where do you think this place is?
• Is it real?

3. Next, have students create their own version of the scream. Tell students that they can change the mood of the picture by creating different kinds of lines and using different colors. Talk about what colors set different types of moods.
4. Have students use a different expression on the face of the man. Let them decide what character he could be. Is he old, short, rich, poor, happy, sad, etc.? Tell students to make it original. They can add any type of clothing or accessories to the person in the picture to help to express who he is, where he is, and what he is feeling.
5. When students are done, teacher can have a critique as a class on their work.

Variations of the Activity

• Teacher can incorporate technology into the lesson by uploading the drawings to Voicethread. Once on the website, teacher can have students critique their classmate’s work either by text or voice.
• For lower grades, teacher can focus on color mixing. Oil pastels can be used to mix colors in their pictures. A mini lesson can be taught prior to this lesson about primary and secondary colors and color blending.
• Try recreating the image using only one color with white/black to create a monochromatic image. This is a nice play on setting mood and teaches students about color mixing.

References

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Munch
• http://arthistory.we-wish.net/2007/04/29/did-you-know-edvard-munch-the-scream/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionism
• http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/23/world/munch-s-scream-is-stolen-from-a-crowded-museum-in-oslo.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_scream
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sick_Child
• http://www.arthistoryguide.com/travel/travel23.aspx

WebQuest

Maurice Sendak


Maurice Sendak is artist, illustrator, theatrical set designer, costume designer and writer who is best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are: a story about an angry little boy who gets sent to his room without dinner and imagines himself as king of the wild beasts in an imaginary land.




Maurice’s interest in art started at age twelve after seeing the Walt Disney movie Fantasia, but his love of books came even earlier when he developed serious health problems and had to be confined to his bed. His illustrations were first published in 1947 in a textbook titled Atomics for the Millions by Dr. Maxwell Leigh Eidinoff. He spent much of the 1950s working as an artist for children's books, before beginning to write his own stories.

Maurice has also written and/or illustrated other books:

The Nutshell Library (1986)
-A boxed set including miniature versions of "Alligators All Around: An Alphabet", "One Was Johnny: A Counting Book", "Chicken Soup with Rice: A Book of Months", and "Pierre: A Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters and a Prologue".

Outside Over There (1981)
- Story about a little girl who is jealous of her baby sister, but ends up saving her from goblins by playing her wonder horn. He received the American Book Award in 1982 for the book, which was also a Caldecott Honor Book and won the 1981 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Illustration.

Higglety Pigglety Pop! (1999)
-Jeannie the dog is pampered, but unhappy. She leaves home to find more and discovers a wonderful opportunity to be an actress. However, she needs experience and goes on to have some very disconcerting experiences. This clever story is also interesting as an account of the lure of an artist's true vocation, even in the face of obstacles and discomfort.

In the Night Kitchen (1970)
-Illustrated in a style reminiscent of comic books, this is the exuberant story of a little boy and his nighttime adventures. Mickey is awakened by a noise, falls out of his clothes, and "into the light of the night kitchen." This fantasy is very appealing to small children. In 1971 it was recognized as a Caldecott Honor Book. The book, first published in 1970, has often been subjected to censorship for its drawings of a young boy prancing naked through the story. It has been challenged in several American states including Illinois, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Texas. It regularly appears on the American Library Association's list of "frequently challenged and banned books." (6]

Questions:

-What is the job of an illustrator?
-What are the benefits of writing and illustrating your own stories?
-Does an artist have more freedom writing and illustrating his/her books or solely illustrating?

Your Webquest:

1. Use the internet to research more work of Maurice Sendak. There is something in common that many of his books have. It is called a "style." His style of writing and illustrating includes monsters and/or animals in his stories. The way he paints his images also has a style, it has texture by the way he uses his lines.

2. Look for another artist/writer/illustrator who has written or illustrated books. Choose one of these people who you think has a "style" to their work.
(HINT: look up the work of artist Kadir Nelson)
I would define his style of work as:
* Using African Americans in his work.
* Using images of people
* Telling stories about important people in history.

3. Define what kind of style that this artist has. Present 2 to 3 images or books that shows the artist's style.

Here are some websites that will help you to get started on your search:
-http://www.google.com
-http://www.yahoo.com
-http://www.childrensillustrators.com
-http://www.qbbooks.com/store/40380.htm

Activity:
• Write your own children's book!

Here are some suggestions to get your stories going:
-Think of a funny incident that has happened you in your life.
-Base your story on a cool dream that you have had.
-Make up an imaginary character and write about their adventures.

• Be the illustrator and define your style!
-First, think about the words you have written in your story.
-Next, choose “key” words that help to describe your story.
-Use those words to create pictures that will describe the story.
-Use colors that will help to set the “mood” of your story
(Example: happy-yellow, sad-dark blue/black, angry-red, etc.)

• Take your time, do the best you can, and have fun!

References:
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_the_Wild_Things_Are
-http://collectingchildrensbooks.blogspot.com/2009/03/arts-and-sciences.html
-http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060255008/Nutshell_Library/index.aspx
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Night_Kitchen

Silhouettes and Shadow Puppets

Tonight I cut out a shape of an elephant and a mouse. I thought to create a shadow puppet show based on the two shapes. The story would be that the two animals had an unlikely friendship because they are such different sizes. Within the story, the two animals would go on different adventures and meet new animals that they would meet on their adventures. The story and the character shapes would be written and created by my students. The animal shapes could be created very simply for younger students or more complex for students who are older and more experienced. However, I thought this would be a nice lesson for the older students to create and perform for the lower grades. I plan to try this lesson and see what happens.

Ed. Media A

Hello everybody! Here is my first post for my Ed. Media A class. I am very excited about learning even more ways to incorporate technology into my art classroom. Last semester, I learned so much about websites that enable me to post my students' work onto the internet. I think the most visited site I went to was Voicethread. This is a website where you can post images and then comment on the image via text or by recording a voice. This was a wonderful way for me to introduce my students to critiquing. I would post their artwork on the website, have them briefly describe their work, and then record their classmate's critique of the work. Surprisingly, all of the students were very kind to each other in their critiques and it turned out to be a positive (and effective) way to introduce technology into my classroom. I am looking forward to learning so much more this semester!