Creativity in Art
Fostering and Nurturing Creativity in Art
Creativity is a profoundly important topic, not only in art, but in many other areas of the curriculum. You would think that creativity is to be found in abundance in an Art room and yet all too often nothing could be further from the truth.
It
is very common to see 'recipe' art being taught. This is where every student
in the class comes up with a variation on a single theme that the teacher
has prescribed. For example: everyone makes an African mask, or a ceramic
vase, or a cubist painting, or a flower picture. The same materials are
used by everyone and the same skills incorporated. I see this type of
art time and time again in every school I visit.
It is very sad to see and no where is it to be found more than in the secondary school. I've done it myself for many years until I realised how much I was cheating the students. Art should be about personal expression. THEIR personal expression not yours! Their artwork should reflect their ideas, thoughts, opinions, likes and dislikes. Their imagination should be stimulated and above all, their work should look like children's art work, not a pale copy of an early 20th Century Cubist painting or a Georgia O'Keeffe flower.
Teachers (especially art specialists) have a habit of removing creativity and taking over control of the making process in order to raise the quality of outcomes. This especially true of teachers who are teaching GCSE courses, where the emphasis is on getting results. Teachers have been forced down this road by the demands of schools senior management and the pressure of A*-C GCSE Grades.
Many GCSE courses are made up of: Still Life Projects, Cubist Projects, Georgia O'Keeffe, Pop Art (Roy Lichtenstein) and pattern making. This does not, in my opinion reflect anyone's art let alone that of a 16 year old!
As an Art Teacher you should not be enforcing YOUR ideas and opinions upon your students you should be providing platforms from which THEY can express themselves.
Improve creativity in the classroom
In order to improve creativity in the classroom you should set open tasks and projects. Try to avoid setting narrow, closed activities. Instead, try to set work that has opportunities for students to give their own interpretation. It is very sad to see whole classes of students producing nearly identical sets of work, that might even be of a very high standard. Teachers of art should never complete work for a student, if they want to demonstrate 'how to' they should show the skill or technique on a scrap piece of paper. Tasks should have lots of room for personal direction and interpretation. Planning and preparation of projects is of paramount importance. A good method here is to plan a project from the bottom up. Decide what skill's, techniques and methods of working that you would like to deliver. Then create an open task that stipulates the demonstration of that skill.
For
example, I may want to teach the students about the proportions of the
human form. The classic method of doing this is to produce a power point/hand
out and have the students copy and learn some facts about human proportion.
Then students might be asked to produce their own picture using the correct
proportions. However, if I get students into groups and set them a task:
Using a piece of string, identify the approximate sizes and proportions
of the human body, then the students will become engaged and stimulated.
If I follow this up with an activity such as Produce an original piece of artwork based on theme of: the Human body in motion. Then students are posed a problem which requires investigation. Suddenly, lots of possibilities have been opened up and questions raised. What I had originally wanted was to teach the proportions of the Human Form. What I now have is a class full of inquisitive minds and a thousand questions.
Do not show examples of students work!
Avoid showing examples of work to students that attempt to demonstrate this is how to do it. In short: do not show examples of students work! All that happens when you show work in this way is that students copy the example and creativity is lost. Do not show examples of artists work at the beginning of projects. This might sound odd, especially to art specialists, but by showing examples of artists work you simply encourage copying. It has become the norm for GCSE students to be rewarded for imitating an artists style. A classic example of this is: the whole class producing a portrait in the style of Van Gogh or Picasso. You have removed all creativity in doing this. It is better to show examples of artists work at the end of a session. Or perhaps have a slide show playing whilst the students are doing their work and casually draw their attention to it.
Make experimentation the norm
Make
experimentation the norm wherever possible, try to provide a range of
art materials and encourage experimentation. Unless you are delivering
a material specific lesson, such as pencil shading skills for example,
then you should not direct students to working in a specific medium. There
should be a range of materials available and students should be made aware
that they can work in whatever style and material they feel comfortable
in. Try to have a wide range of: Shading pencils, Wax crayons, Pastels,
Chalk Pastels, Colouring Pencils, Felt pens, charcoal, inks, etc. This
will encourage confidence and diversity. If a student becomes straight
jacketed with an art material and is reluctant to move away from it, then
you may need to be more directive.
Take away the safety net
Students love to work in their comfort zones and rarely enjoy being bold and courageous when making art. They can become obsessed with control and hate to make mistakes. They want to have perfect sketchbooks where everything is neat and ordered. (I know lots of teachers like this too!) At regular intervals you should take away their safety net and remove the control. In short: MAKE A MESS!
A good technique is to have students draw and paint with a range of materials that are harder to control. Drawing with Indian Ink and sticks instead of a pencil is one example. You can draw and paint with just about anything: Feathers are good, stumps made from paper towels are also good, as is painting with pieces of card board instead of a brush.
You
might put the class into small groups and give each of them a box containing
a range of scrap objects and materials, tubes, straws, sticks, feathers,
pipe cleaners, cloth, paper anything really. Provide them with some ink
and some different types of paint (water colour, poster, acrylic etc.)
The objective is for THEM to try out and discover what marks these materials
can make that they can then feed back into the group. You might provide
a subject matter such as a still life object for example. When the group
have finished this task there should be a discussion and critique with
the whole class so that they can swop ideas. You then repeat the exercise
so that everyone can try out each others ideas.
