Almost There...going down to the wire

"In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind."

Louis Pasteur

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2htZKDlPsHI

The link above is to a new 2 plus minute video of my students on Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2010 during Period 2 working on their self prescribed art assignments that are due on Thursday.  I wanted to show how diverse the choices students made were and how engaged they are in the process of creating their work.  

I started the period out by having them write down in the their log books the goals they needed to accomplish this week having to do with their projects, their 6 week test, and their grade sheet rubric for evaluating this art work.  At the end of the period I had them check off or comment on which goals they worked on and possibly accomplished.

I spoke with a couple of students suggesting alternative ways to enhance their drawings.  They seemed to take the input positively and continue working to improve their work.  Very gratifying.

I had to ask one student to speak with me in the hall.  She has a good sense of design and has done some fine work, even after having been absent for 4 days.  She has caught up and is moving forward.  The problem is that she does like attention and she has found it in two other students.  Unfortunately, because of the larger number of students in this class, (30), as opposed to 20 in my other two classes, there aren't spaces enough, far away from the other two enough to keep her from disturbing them and the rest of the class.  When she is out of the room, everyone is focused on their work and the noise level goes down a whole lot.  I talked to her a couple of times, but I'm afraid it just wasn't sinking in.  We'll see what happens on Thursday when all is due.  I'm posting a couple of pictures of work in progress.  This first one is a student who is using her drawings of the small plastic colored boxes to draw four related 9 X 12 drawings using colored pencil and charcoal (a combination I wouldn't have suggested, but she tried and it seems to work for this drawing).  THAT'S what I see as a real perk in this process.  Students trying things an old hand like me might poo poo.  Good for her!  The smaller one is another adaptation of the boxes on 12 X 18 and so far, just in colored pencil.  The last one in on the largest paper in pencil.  This student has worked very focussed in #2 pencil.  He drew the bone, then cut it out and repeatedly drew it in a radially balanced composition.  Then we talked about how he might set off the positive and negative shapes with some dark to light shading. As you can see at the bottom left of the drawing he is "getting there" with the value gradations.  He has a lot of space to cover with only a light pencil, but he seems to be ok with that.

I really like sharing these works as "in process" works because usually the only time people see works from my classes is when they are hanging on the hallway wall outside my room.  As these works ARE finished, I will record them each cycle and post them in a slide show on youtube for all to enjoy.

I hope you have enjoyed this blog and if you have, leave a comment.  Thanks for reading.  Share with your friends.