During a short visit in my hometown of Sarnia after graduation, I had the pleasure of teaching a 2-day class to Grade 11 -12's at St. Clair Secondary School. I've recently been reconnecting with my former Art teacher Mrs. Ireland and it has come up on a few occasions how I wish I was introduced to design principles in highschool. It was during one of those visits with Mrs. Ireland, I offered to teach her kids about abstraction when she mentioned her students were struggling with the concept. Before my Graphic Design career I fancied the idea of teaching art in highschool, so I jumped at the chance.
I taught them the basics of simplification through abstraction. They got to choose a picture of an elephant or a swordfish and with the tracing paper provided, they slowly found inherent shapes found in that image. From sheet to sheet the images became more and more simple and became more unique. I also asked them at the end of the second day to fill their tracings in. This forced them to think in shapes rather than line.
This really was a crash course in abstraction, but I am proud of the results a lot of them were able to achieve. This was the first time any of them were introduced to this exercise and a surprising amount of them were able to grasp it right away. They were a bright group of kids and I hope I was able to give them a new perspective on how abstraction can be use toward design and art.
Dude!!! That's AWESOME!!!! Nice work buddy!
ReplyDeleteSo I realize you posed this like a year ago, but I"m going to comment anyways!
ReplyDeleteAs a fellow graduate of St. Clair I too wish that I had the opportunity to explore design in high school. If I had some exposure I am sure that I may have changed my career paths somewhat as I did not realize that design piqued my interest as much as it does until university.
This looks like a great art lesson though! I have conducted a variety of lessons for varying age groups on the topic of abstraction, a difficult concept for students to grasp. One in particular was quite similar to yours in which the kids used tracing paper and slowly reduced a face to something almost unrecognizable. It was fun!