SchoolArts - March 2011

Left top: Polett Bali, Turn On Its Ear. Left bottom: Grace Morgan, In One Ear and Out the Other. Right: Caleb Woodies, Pin Your Ears Back.

Skills Taught/Reinforced
Technical skills •
Realistic modeling •
(especially mark-making
and value contrast)
Composition •
Critical thinking and •
problem solving
Planning •

Materials

list of ear idioms •
(from the Internet)
visual resources: ear •
contour drawing tutorial
and photographs of ears
white drawing paper or •
tag board
graphite pencils •
erasers •
tape to mask borders •
an ear, the first from an online tuto-
rial and the second from an online
photograph of an ear, both of which I
projected on a screen. They chose an
idiom and began making thumbnail
sketches. When virtually everyone
had a basic plan in
place, I led them in
an in-process dis-
cussion to encour-
age even more
cross-fertilization.

(erased) halos, echo lines, extended lines, and repeated shapes.

Similarly, students used their
knowledge of the creative problem-
solving strategy, SCAMPER (an
acronym for Substitute, Combine,
“multiplied” her lovely ear drawings
as ghostlike erased forms, and Troy J.
“substituted” an ear for the knot in a
tree trunk to communicate his idiom,
“Fields have eyes and woods have
ears.”
Other students chose to create
literal interpretations of figurative
expressions. For example, Laura M.
drew an ear in a box for “boxed ears”
and Caleb W. drew an ear with pins in
it for “pin your ears back.”

Final Thoughts

As an art teacher, I find that when I reach out to members of the community, think more flexibly about assignments, and take calculated risks, I end up with good ideas coming out of my ears.

Students were captivated
with an illustrated lecture
on the connections
between art and medicine.

Betsy DiJulio is a national board certified art teacher at Princess Anne High School in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where she was named 2010 Citywide Teacher of the Year. betsy.dijulio@vbschools.com

Successful Interpretations In the end, this challenge resulted in a particularly high level of success across the board. Interestingly, the limited subject matter actually resulted in more sophisticated images, as students had to rely on their innovative use of marks, value, and composition to communicate their ideas. So, once again, compositional strategies came into play as students successfully incorporated both dark and light

NATIONAL STANDARD

Students synthesize the creative and analytical principles and techniques of the visual arts and selected other arts disciplines, the humanities, or the sciences.