I need art class ideas and help!!?

Question

K so I am not a trained teacher, but I absolutely love art. Well I taught three quarters last year, we did various things - sketching eachother, worked on the features of the face. We did a big project in recreating paintings in acrylic it was ok. They asked me to teach again and I have a few ideas - delving into watercolor, teaching style and practical steps. I really need advise on what to teach, and how to get the students interested. They have to take the class and a lot of them just don't like art. What can I do to intrigue them???Help me please - I beg you!

Middle and High School

Answer 1

what level? Elem, middle or HS?
Your district should have specific guidelines as to what you are expected to teach. And they do expect you to follow those objectives.

Answer 2

Well, you can try some short films that exemplify using strange art to strong advantage. I'll give you three good ones, rent them and look at them. It'll cost you like $40 just to screen them or show them.

Adventures of An * (Hubley, et al)

Here they used clear crayola type wax on background paper and sprayed or smeared water colors over it. Then animated the * over that.

Sand or Peter and the Wolf (Leaf). Sone while still a student at Harvard's Carpenter center on a background lighted light box of ground glass with sand and tools to morph the sand into various characters for the story Peter and the Wolf

Her NFBC film The Street won an Oscar. She mixed gylcerine with paint and did this as finger painting on glass.

Answer 3

The website below is a GREAT resource for Art Lessons, classroom management tips, etc.

I find that getting excited about the lesson helps the students to get into it too. Show them lots of art... all kids get excited by Pop Artists work...they can relate to it---bright colors, cartoon like, animated... Also, get them talking about the art they're looking at. Ask them questions, let them tell you what's going on in the piece. When students make personal connections to art, they automatically begin to become interested. I think many students want to know how what they're learning about relates to their lives.
As for self-portraits, I have always found to allow students to draw themselves first, without ANY instruction from you. Then, talk about facial proportions, etc (which you can google on the web.... the face is 5 eyes wide, you can fit one eye between your two, the face is broken into three equal parts.... etc). To finish, have them draw a final portrait with your guidence and keeping in mind the proportions...then take out that first drawing. Allow the students to see how far they've come, and see their improvements. I tell my students that anyone can draw, they just need to learn the "secrets".

Finally, there's a GREAT listgroup on yahoo... [e-mail] . It's a bunch of art educators, and such who just put questions out there for other (artists, teachers, etc)to help answer. Everyone's super friendly and helpful. I find answers to questions I didn't even know I was looking for.
Feel free to email for more specific answers/ sample lessons. Best of luck!
[e-mail]

Answer 4

Well, it doesn't sound like you did anything with 3D art and if the class is required, there are people who will respond much more to hands on forming than painting. Besides mud clay and plasticene clay, making forms in soft wire and carving wood are possibilities.
You might explore the effects of doing both: a painting of a person and then a 3D of the same person then a painting or drawing of the 3D.
You might explore abstract looking at mobiles and stabiles as well as field color or Mondrian.
You might look at removal art: etching, dry point, and carving sculpture as well as finger painting (drawing in fields of color paint)

Answer 5

Check out the book for art creativity for children - Creative Painting For The Young Artist by Jason Alster . It also has ideas in how to develop the artistic mode of seeing as well as picking art as a subject.

Answer 6

My question to you is, do the students have to paint? If not get them interested in another form of art, perhaps ceramics, wood, paper projects or the like. Art is not just painting & drawing. Have them do abstract art out of sticks from the yard or scrapts of material or paper. Then again the students could make a protrait of themselves, others or a flower using yarn, material, paper, ceramics or the like. Think out side the box.

Answer 7

I remember a art class on egg tempera. We each had to split an egg and get the egg white separate to mix with tempera powder. We painted a fancy letter (the letter of our first names.)

The lesson was about calligraphy and illuminate texts and something about that was a kind of paint that used to be used.

Answer 8

Find ways to allow the students to complete projects that do interest them... You supply smaller projects for grading purposes within the realm of teaching those disciplines that must be covered. Then allow the students to work on individual projects that float their particular boat...
“Do not train youth to learning by force and harshness: but direct them to it by what amuses their minds. So that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” –Plato

That just says it all doesn't it!

Answer 9

still life (plants, pottery), faces, bodies, animals, abstract, combination of things

Answer 10

Try these links:
http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/art/contents.htm
http://www.goshen.edu/art/ed/d-list.html
http://www.goshen.edu/art/ed/art-ed-links.html
http://www.lessonplanspage.com/ArtK1.htm
http://www.sundaytimesineducation.com/NewspapersInSchools/NISForArt.htm