Playful Beginnings
That first day of art class...
Many years ago, when I was a new IB art teacher (Heather), I dutifully photocopied all the assessment criteria and presented my already overwhelmed students with stacks of formal, wordy IB Art assessment criteria descriptors and told them this is what would be expected of them! Poor kids. That's not the approach I would recommend now. I prefer to start with something playful and engaging that will set the stage for the exploratory and creative nature of the course, and let them feel that this is a class they are going to love...
The activity pictured here is a Collaborative Circle
Setting the tone
Before embarking on the serious stuff of IB ART let's set the tone for creative exploration and some healthy risk taking. If art making is infused with playfulness and there is less focus on results then creative joy can flourish. This can be a single lesson or a first week of playful introduction. The aim is to create an atmosphere of trust and self empowerment… Once this is established students will have more confidence in taking their own initiatives.
Making the First Mark
Starting a brand new sketchbook can be intimidating. If students are hesitant or afraid of "messing up" the Visual Journal, take a tip from Jean Miro' : the artist famously spilled ink, paint, coffee, or unevenly primed a canvas so that a starting point was already established. Once you have made a mark, marred the pristine white surface of the empty page, it is much easier to proceed. Here are a few ways to overcome fear of the blank page:
- Spill a cup of tea on your paper and begin a drawing from the stain.
- Walk on your paper, making footprints.
- Rub the page all over with charcoal and buff it off so you have a nice atmospheric surface to work on.
- Erase an old drawing you don't like, almost all the way - now start drawing on top of this ghostly image.
Art is super interesting...
… this responsive slideshow gets students moving about, looking at and talking about art, what they like, what they think and feel when they look at images. This activity requires NO prior knowledge; it is fun and teenagers love it (as do adults). It takes between 15-30 minutes depending on how much time you discuss each slide. It's also a great way to get to know your new students, hear their voices.
Intuitive Response slides
When looking at art works for the first time we naturally have an intuitive response, we like or we don’t like or maybe we feel indifferent. We may have a strong aesthetic response or we may feel an...
Think like an artist....
- Collect multiples of one thing: many different shaped leaves, bus tickets, teabags. Create a method of display with labels. Photograph or draw in journal.
- Collect things in varying hues of the same colour. Arrange your collection into a composition. Document it. Give it a title.
- Look for found patterns, record them with rubbings and drawings in your journal. Note where each pattern was found.
- Take something apart and put it back together in a completely different way that alters the form and the function.
- Make a 3D piece of work that fits in a matchbox.
- Create a viewfinder (cut a rectangle from a piece of card) and use it to frame different compositions within the same view, record in journal.
- Choose a building or a landscape in your area, draw it in chalk or charcoal at different times of day, observing the changing light, like Monets’ paintings of Rouen Cathedral.
- Select a small square section of the earth and meticulously record, like Albrecht Durers’ Piece of turf.
- Design something to place on an altar. Explain why.Explore Materials
Material Exploration
Interacting with materials is a great way to overcome timidity in this non goal oriented exploration ( Richard Serra's list of verbs) ... a little prep is required in providing a set of materials, or alternately just limit it to a sheet of paper, no other tools!
Richard Serra's Verbs
For the more experimental minded, try this exercise in lateral thinking: In the mid-1960s Serra began experimenting with nontraditional materials including fiberglass, neon, vulcanized rubber, and, later,...
Entry Points
This ever-expanding catalogue of starting points includes links to artists and inquiry questions - check out the extensive Student Activities and Resources library.
Art Seeds
Art Seed Bank is a dedicated section on this website that proposes mini explorations or art challenges for your students. These are intended to get them looking, thinking, and creating, at any point in the...
✨Sparks✨ (from artists) series
Our ✨Sparks✨ (from artists) series shares artists’ work and practices in connection with creative strategies, visual language, practical investigation, and inquiry. We'll look at how artists transform...
🛠️Creative Strategies🛠️ Toolkit
Are you stuck? Unable to move past your first idea? Interested and exciteds to reshape past ideas, but wishing to move forward more creatively ? Our 🛠️ Creative Strategies Toolkit 🛠️ offers...
SCAMPER Ideation
Art-making is central to the Visual Arts curriculum. As such, generating creative ideas as a preparatory step for art-making is part and parcel of the process. Here, we unpack SCAMPER, an incredible...
More playful creative activities
take your pick from any of these activities designed to encourage playful interactions and explorations with materials, concepts and creating meaning.
The Dot: Curatorial Activity
If your classroom looks anything like mine, (Shannon) you might be preparing for a new cohort of first-year IB students with various artistic experiences. Developing a sense of inclusion can be particularly...
Blue Bag Project
This is a simple exercise in visual exploration that teaches conceptual thinking as well as creative manipulation of materials.It is similar to the Object Study except that the object is the same for...
Collaborative Circle
Try this as an ice breaker for a new group of students or as a bonding activity. It is a fun, collaborative, non competitive way to make something together that actually looks amazing when it is finished!
Seed: A Body Map
This seed takes inspiration from Body mapping as an arts based therapy using visual symbolic forms of expression.Materials Lie down on the paper, position yourself as you wish, and have a friend draw an...
Surrealist Games
Light hearted approaches to loosen up and introduce a sense of play into the serious business of making art. These activities are great for a new class, for the start of the year, but also fun to throw...
Oblique Strategies
Oblique Strategies is one of my favorite lateral thinking aides and I think you will find it has special appeal for the visual artist. Oblique Strategies (over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas) is a set...