High School
Sketchbook
INSPIRATIONS
tion portfolio on this theme, I realized
that her varied approaches could be
employed by teachers in the design
of assignments that avoid hackneyed,
trite, illustrative, and derivative
images.
As an art teacher, I have shied away from designing instructional units around the big idea of “ecology.”
Personally passionate about the topic,
I feared that I would not be able to
guide students effectively away from
Betsy DiJulio
finished products that looked more like
“save the earth” posters than layered,
metaphorical, and sophisticated works
of art.
However, working with my student,
Jennifer Anne Davis, as she develops
her Advanced Placement concentra-
Draw from Observation
One of the strategies that has helped
prevent student assignments from
leaning in a didactic, too literal direction is the requirement, in all of my
classes, that students draw from observation. Not only does observational
drawing improve their technique, but
it also helps students arrive at fresh
and original approaches to their big
ideas.
One particularly instructive case-in-point is Jennifer’s Albatross
mixed-media painting. In this piece, she used
a reference photograph of an albatross
that she found in a book. What prevents Jennifer’s painting from being
an illustration of the plight of the albatross—which, she had read, are dying
because of swallowing plastic objects
from the human waste stream—are
the drawings, from observation, of the
water bottles and the stylized plastic
six-pack holder.
Minimize It
The “drawing from observation”
requirement also served Jennifer well
