Doing in Art
Developing skills and Techniques in Art
The 'Doing' of art involves providing your students with opportunities to make art, raising levels of skill, & having them develop projects. As Art is a very skill based process we can provide stand alone skill sessions to demonstrate 'how to do' art or we can build them into a much wider project. Usually art teachers build skill sessions into their units of work. This provides a subject matter for the skill to be learned and relates it to a bigger picture.
For a non-specialist art teacher this is very difficult. You can download schemes of work from the internet but unless you know a little about how it all fits together then it all seems a little daunting. And what do you do when your own skills might be lacking? Well what you do is to pass the emphasis back to the student and away from you. You do not need to be able to do it yourself, you just need to know how to teach it.
YOU do not need to prove you can DO art, you just need to create opportunities for THEM to develop their ability. And you can do that by planning a good Art Project.
Here is how you can plan your own projects and decide on the skills you are going to teach without having any specialist knowledge yourself.
1. Chose a theme
There are a number of common themes in Art. These are the themes that most art teachers agree on, with a couple that I have added myself. When writing schemes of work you can select a theme to focus your work around. However, you do not just have to stick to one theme, it is fun to Mix & Match. Pick two or more from different themes from the guide below and combine them to make a project: (You can download the "Themes in Art" guide to by clicking here.)
2. Decide on an area for study
When you have chosen a theme and a project idea, it is important to decide on the skills and techniques you want to cover and the field of art you want the students to work in. These are the most common:
Painting
Drawing
Sculpture
Clay
3D
Printmaking
Textiles
Clay/Ceramics
Digital Art
Photography
3. Identify Skills/Techniques: Learning Focus
Then you need to identify what skill and/or technique you want to teach in the Unit. This is more often referred to as a learning objective or learning outcome. Naturally this does not have to be an art based skill, it might be that you want to focus on RESEARCH skills for example, however I have listed the most important and obvious Art Skills for focus. You might want to incorporate more than one learning focus. Here are some important Art Learning Objectives to help you:
Painting
Students need to know the Primary, Secondary and Tertiary colours and
how to mix them.
They should know and understand some basic colour theory and understand
how colours can relate to each other (complimentary)
They should have experience of creating mood and feeling with colour and
know that colours can have social significance.
They should know how to tint and shade with colours to create depth and
tone.
They should understand how colours can have warm or cold temperatures.
They should have experience of controlling paint to be neat and precise.
They should learn about different types of paint and their properties
They should know and understand basic housekeeping and brush care.
Drawing
Students should learn about pencils, their different types and properties
They should learn how to control a pencil for shading and detail
They should develop their skills in tonal Shading,
They should develop their skills in using Line,
Students should be taught about building Compositions from simple shapes,
They should be taught Measuring skills,
They should be taught simple Perspective,
Students should have opportunity to be creative with drawing mediums
Sculpture/3D
Using a range of found and made material to make sculptures,
Learn about different Forming, Joining & Cutting techniques,
They should develop their understanding of Shape & Form
Clay
Make forms by building Slabs,
Make forms by building thumb pots,
Make forms by coiling,
Learn forming &, joining techniques
Learn finishing, glazing methods
Textiles
Create patterns and designs using Batik,Learn to the properties and principles
of Wax Resist,
Use Mood Boards to stimulate ideas,
Learn Applique techniques to decorate and finish designs,
Learn forming and joining methods using sewing and joining techniques
Create formal and informal patterns
Digital Art
Create Photographs using a digital camera,
Manipulate their own photographs using software,
Learn how to use software to abstract drawings and paintings,
Use a computer to create patterns,
Use paint programmes and drawing programmes
You might need some help here, since you may not know very much about
these skills yourself. Try typing any of the above ideas into a search
engine and you should be able to get a basic understanding of what these
skills are from your results. Better still go to a good book shop and
research them yourself. I find books are by far and away the best way
to investigate new art skills.
However, you do not need a lot of depth and understanding about them really. The main thing that I always do is to have a practice go myself before I teach it so that you can learn the pitfalls. You do not need to be able to be an expert. You just need to be able to be brave and give it a try. Younger students will appreciate your honesty if you admit to not being very good yourself and they will gain in confidence if they can do it better than you can!
Now we have most of the Unit of work sorted. We have a theme, an area for study and a skill/technique. What we need to do now is to decide HOW we are going to deliver those skills. That is where the next section: Creativity comes in.
