Lesson #4 Documentation

Cooper Home, Lesson #4, Abstract portraiture with Pointillism and Cubism, 11/7/22

I think overall that this was a very successful lesson for a few reasons. For this lesson, I was thinking about incorporating a little art history. I feel like I hardly knew anything about art history until some of my first college courses. I think it's important to know about some different techniques they could try as well as where they came from. I think that my mini lesson before went quite well. I think it was almost too long because right at the end I lost a few people's attention but I was very happy with the level of engagement in my presentation from the students. I think that passing around some examples that I did as well as asking them questions, in order for them to have an opportunity to share background knowledge, kept them pretty engaged. I also think that providing a variety of materials as well as the paint doppers was a fun idea to try a technique with several mediums. I also think that it was very helpful that I did a short demo with the paint doppers first considering that even a small amount of pressure would produce a large blob of paint on the paper. When talking about big names like Picasso I thought about museums and wanted them to be able to show their art in a gallery walk. I had all of the students put some of their favorite pieces out in a different room to separate the work space from the viewing space to enforce the idea of a transition from working to viewing.

In this lesson, there were a few things that didn't go exactly how I wanted them to. It seemed like I focused a lot on the techniques of cubism and pointillism but not enough on what a portrait is. Many students choose to draw things that were not a person or an animal which was what was originally intended for this assignment. I do feel like they all got a good handle on at least one of the techniques but I didn't give enough emphasis on what a portrait is and what isn't. Although, during this semester, I have learned to let go and not set an expectation for the outcome of student work as long as they're learning and having a good time. At the same time, I want to make sure that I'm not giving too much information or being too specific because I want this to be a positive learning experience for everybody and I don't want anybody to get overwhelmed. In terms of preparation, I think I should have used my fellow co-teachers to my advantage and had them also make some examples just to have more variety for the students to gain inspiration from.

I would love to do a lesson like this again in the future. Maybe next time, depending on the ability level or age of students I would choose to either have them focus on technique or the concept of portraiture and not both. I think for this class, some students were able to grasp both concepts but several students only got the concept of the technique which was completely fine. I would also love to have the opportunity to have students view their work as well as their classmates' work hung up. It was okay to have laid out on the tables But hanging up a work really allows it to be clearly seen and viewed by multiple people at once to allow for discussion.