In todays art input we discussed how many people think that they cannot draw or think that they cannot do art. When in actual fact, making a simple mark on paper is an art from.
We read part of a story called “The Dot”, which tells the tale of a young girl who thinks she cannot draw until she realises she can make amazing pictures out of simple dots on the paper. It was her teacher who encouraged her to start with one single dot, which then inspired her to create more art work using dots, which then became her own individual style. Here is a video of the story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5mGeR4AQdM
I think this story made me realise the importance of inspiring children to be adventurous with art and help them to realise that art can be created out of any kind of mark made on paper. It is important to encourage them and make them realise that anyone can be an artist.
We then went on to experimenting with mark making ourselves.We started off by using different toys such as lego dipped in ink to see what kind of prints we could make.
We then went on to dipping parts of our hand in ink and randomly printing them on the paper. We then had to study the marks we had made and turn them into pictures that we saw within the mark. for example, the first mark I made using two fingers and part of my palm and after looking at for a while the shape reminded me of bunny ears, so I turned the image into a habit.
The purpose of this exercise was to show us how an important part of children’s creative process is imagination. According to Eisner “In the Arts, imagination is given license to fly.” Eisner (2002, p.198)
References
Eisner, E. (2002) The Arts and the Creation of Mind. London: Yale University Press.
Reynolds, P. (2010) The Dot. [Online] Available: https://youtu.be/t5mGeR4AQdM [Accessed 8 January 2017]
During our first art input we studied different levels of artwork through the primary school. The groups of art work were split up into 3 groups, lower, middle and upper primary. What I found when I studied each group that I was most drawn to the lower primarys work and I think this was because it had the most originality. McAuliffe states “As children become more aware of others art, they can begin to feel particularly self conscious about their work and their own ability in art and design.” McAuliffe, (2007).
Also as they got older it became more apparent that the children had been brainwashed into following a certain structure, painting and drawing the same things, in the same style. We discussed how a lot of the pictures looked as though they had been guided through the piece of work step by step by the teacher or they had been given an initial piece of work by the teacher to copy.
Gibbs states “Where art lessons do exist, they are more often presented as an exercise in following instructions with the entire class diligently following set instructions to produce near-identical pieces of work, all doing their best to copy the teacher’s example; expression, creativity and originality do not come into it.”
Personally I do not think this is a good thing as it does not allow children develop their own artistic style or create work based on their own ideas and experiences. Teachers should be doing more to support children’s individual creativity, rather than making them copy examples to produce replicas.
Fair enough, this approach would get them to understand shape, line, texture etc but it doesn’t allow them to develop their own approach to creating an image. We also discussed as a class how some of these limitations were probably to do with teachers not wanting to take the time to clean up afterwords, it is more convenient for them to use simple methods of art which are quick easy and won’t create mess.
These are two of my favourite pictures from the younger stages in the school.
The first because I feel it is obvious the child has had freedom to create what they wanted. There is no clear structure to it, it looks a lot like experimentation of colour and pattern. I like the second picture because it looks like the child has been able to experiment with texture.
References
Gibb, C. (2012) Room13: The movement and the International Network. Blackwell Publishing LTD
McAuliffe, D. (2007) Foundation and the Primary settings. In: Cox, S., Watts, R., Grahame, J., Herne, S. and MacAuliffe, D. (Eds) Teaching Art and Design 3-11 London: Continuum
“Music is a moral Law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness and life to everything.” –Plato
In our first music workshop we discussed the importance of Music in education. We discussed how music can enhance childrens learning in a variety of ways such as helping to develop their brains facilitating academic achievement and developing creative capacities for life long success.
As someone who has had a passion for music from a young age I completely agree with this. I took trumpet, piano and guitar lessons from the age of 7 and was in bands, orchestras and vocal ensembles the whole way through my school life.Music has taught me many lessons, such as the importance of team work. Playing as part of a group teaches you about the importance of listening to each other and not just focusing on yourself. Hallam states that music “helps individuals learn to support each other, maintain commitment and bond together for group goals” (Hallam, 2010, p279)
Music has taught me resilience and how to pushing through a hard situation, often when learning an instrument you come up against challenges in the music which can make you want to give up and quit, but this then drives you to keep going because the satisfaction of completing something you thought you couldn’t do is so much better.
“Success in music can enhance overall feelings of confidence and self-esteem, increasing motivation for study more generally” (Hallam, 2010 p278). Music has given me much more confidence. I used to be someone who would have been petrified to get up in front of an audience and do a presentation, but I often got made to perform solos at school concerts. The more I got used to performing in front of people, the easier it became to present my self without hiding behind an instrument. These are just a few of the many things I have gained from being involved in music.
Part of the workshop was to listen to different excerpts of music and discuss how they made us feel and how easy it is for music to alter our mood. Then we listened to a piano concerto by Shostakovich, which had various different sections to it and in groups we had to create a storyboard that went along with each section of the music.
My group came up with a circus story and drew a different part of the show to go with each different section of the music, e.g the lions being tamed and the loud music diminuendos, the gymnasts swinging from trapezes as the music accelerates etc. We then presented our stories to the rest of the class and I found it very interesting to see how different each groups story was, one group had a story about pirates, another group had a story about a cat and mouse chase. This just shows how each individual can have such different creative ideas from the same stimulus.
I thought this would be a great task to use with children as it not only gets them engaged in the music, but it is also a a great task to integrate music, literacy and art together. Some children can struggle to come up with ideas for a story or a drawing, so I thought this idea of using music as a stimulus to think creatively about literacy and art was a great idea.
This task also meets the expressive arts outcomes:
“I have listened to a range of music and can respond by discussing my thoughts and feelings. I can give and accept constructive comment on my own and others’ work.” EXA 1-19a / EXA 2-19a
“Inspired by a range of stimuli, and working on my own and/or with others, I can express and communicate my ideas, thoughts and feelings through musical activities.” EXA 0-18a / EXA 1-18a / EXA 2-18a
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the session and I think this is a lesson I would definitely consider using in the future.
