The Art Room: 09/19/12

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Elements of Art

The Elements of Art are the building blocks to creating and discussing any work of Art. They are:
1) Line-The path of a point.
2) Shape-2-D, enclosed space
3) Form-3D object
4) Value-Range from light to dark
5) Space-Areas in and around art
6) Texture-Implied or real; touch
7) Color-ROYGBIV
Students in grades 2-5 studied these elements carefully and created these projects that demonstrate their understanding of each of these concepts. The back ground behind the students names has seven areas--one area for each of the Elements. We had many great class discussions as we analyzed drawings, photographs and sculptures using these art words. We will be using this knowledge in every art project this year.

10 things learned in Art

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

Pages

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Elements of Art