Translation to Teaching

I have been thinking about how I can incorporate all that I have learned into teaching my high school students. In the past couple of years I have used a Visual Calendar as a warm up exercise. The students are supposed to draw something each day. They may choose whatever is on their mind to do a quick 3 minute sketch. I find that a lot of the kids do not know what to draw and end of scribbling something on the date just to do it. I have been thinking that it would be a little more interesting to make a calendar flag book that has at least twenty pages (4 weeks x 5 days). I would then give a prompt a day or maybe a prompt every other day. Maybe a prompt one day, a response to the previous days work, then a prompt again and keep alternating. Maybe the uniqueness of the book it self would keep them interested. The prompts are such a great jumping off point that I will definitely use some of the ones from this class with my students.

Project Book

I love the idea of a Project Book. I have never planned out a project in this way. My project book is based on my four dogs. Through research I actually learned a little more about the temperment of each of the different breeds of dogs that I have. I then started thinking about how truly unique each dog is which led me to their eyes. Dogs can say so much with just the eyes. They show happiness and sadness with just a change in the eyes. My thoughts led me to doing large scale paintings of dog eyes. Upon further travels in my brain, I got to thinking about the markings of the different breeds. Another large scale, close up of their abstraction of dog markings came to mind. The other idea I stumbled upon was doing large scale paintings of the different features. I really like the brown wash close up of my Lab's freckley nose.

I will continue my project book and further explore my Daschund's snout (a very prominent feature), my Beagle's mouth (they are known for their bark), and my Jack Russell's eyes (since she is the one that really has a lot going on in her mind). I would love to hang these in a grouping almost building a larger than life face of a dog.

Found Drawing, Nicole Kirkpatrick

I enjoyed looking and taking photos for our found drawings. My found drawings sparked an entire project book. They went along with the idea of "line" in my work in Sketchbook. I had no idea that I would have had the ideas I had that stemmed from this simple assignment.

Found Drawings

I had an idea immediately when I was walking to the bus stop. My idea was to take pics of the...what I named..."road nuggets." These are the little bumps that are placed in the center of the lanes on most roads. I thought that organic shape of the tar used to place the geometric shape of the "nugget" would be great for this project.

BUT...when I got back to my hotel, there was a truck that had all of the fans, blowers, and dehumidifiers that are used for fire/water damage clean up. They were stacked in the back of a box truck and the door was open. I thought...PERFECT! So, I took some pictures of the each of the different types. They were all this beautiful blueish green color. I made the color a little bit more intense but still kept the same basic blue green hue. I played and played with these in photoshop, turning, flipping, and cropping. I am quite the novice when it comes to photoshop but I think what I did turned out pretty good.

Peer Response

I posted a peer response to Dawn's "Found Drawings" from July 27th. The response is a comment under her post.