Forming Themes
I gave students the option of choosing a theme first and designing their
compositions accordingly, or allowing the content to emerge out of their
formal decisions. Students used both
strategies effectively, working with a
range of themes from personal choice
to ecology. In the case of allowing
meaning to emerge, it is possible for
the theme to remain too amorphous,
though indeterminate meaning provides an excellent opportunity to
help students analyze works of art for
latent content.
In preparation, I thought carefully
about what skills not already reinforced in prior challenges would be a
necessary foundation. The critical one
was a review of one- and two-point
perspective. This we accomplished
through demonstration and practice
via a simple box-drawing exercise, a
follow-along car drawing tutorial that
