“Too Hard” for Junior-High Art

My students whine sometimes: “It’s too hard!”

I notice that sometimes projects for junior high art are a little silly and watered down, as if young people can’t really do “hard work.”

However, I believe that with good instruction, young teens can do “hard stuff,” even grid drawings like these.

These are gridded drawings from eighth and ninth graders. Yes, it was a new thing and kind of “hard.” We drew our own grids and used photos covered with plastic grids to find the areas to shade, square by square.

Yes, there was a good deal of whining–BUT…everybody eventually made a good grid drawing, shading values, square by square.

It’s about patience and good instruction. I walk around the room and demonstrate, encourage, nag if you will! and soon enough, these youngsters know how to draw their own grids, starting with a big X in the center of the page, and they know how to capture values.

We shouldn’t underestimate the capacity of our kids. It’s really not too hard.

First Week of School

We are just recovering, over the weekend, from our first week at school.

I am fortunate to have a pretty good space for teaching art. We have a very old school, built in the thirties, and the Industrial Arts building is separate from the main school building. My well-lit classroom is next to a woodshop, where I can make any nice little thing out of wood that I need. If I can’t make it, my principal can and will: last year he made forty-five frames for some student paintings. Talk about dedication!

Like almost all of the schools in our district, our classrooms are not cooled for the four weeks of the end of summer. You would not believe how hot it is in these classrooms! I have one old window that opens, that I can prop open with a stick (closing it at night with a long bolt). High tech. I put a little fan in that window but it hardly touches the front of the classroom, much less the back. The classrooms in the main building are much hotter than mine, almost unbearable. It is commonly known that the district administrative offices are all beautifully cooled. I wish we could trade places with them, just for these four weeks of unbearable heat. During the afternoons, I teach in juvenile corrections, which is always cooled nicely.

I am most impressed that after a week, most of my junior high art kids have bought into the fun and delight of learning art. We did a fairly complex values piece (using pencils to shade in darks and lights to make a picture of apples on a tree), and they are very beautiful and very individual. If I can remember to bring my camera to school, I will take a picture of some of these and put them up here. More importantly, the kids have bought into the idea that they can learn to draw! I’ve got them lining up for images to print off the Internet, things they can work on during class when they finish their assignments. Kids are also bringing in pieces that they’ve done at home.

Now, I’m jaded enough to know that the blush will probably fade; it usually does, but on the other hand, many of the kids keep their enthusiasm for art throughout the year. What could be more fun! Even the history has its delightful hooks, if you know how to tell the stories (van Gogh cut off his ear when his friend moved out of his flat–talk about loneliness and insecurity!). 

Truth to tell, I needed a nap on Saturday, but here it’s Sunday night and I’m ready to go again tomorrow morning. Whatever the drawbacks, teaching is a cool job (even without the air conditioning).

“Will I use this in my later life?”

We are using grids a la Brunelleschi to do self portraits. I took a nice three-quarters photo of each student, printed it out 8-1/2″ by 11″ in color on photo paper, and put a grid on top. Then we put a grid between white paper, with drawing paper on top. Render what is in each square, including subtle values, and you’ll end up with an accurate and gorgeous self-portrait.

There’s one thing wrong with this project, though. It is hard.

It takes time and focus to really render accurately what’s in each grid square. That’s all that is hard about it. In terms of technical expertise, it’s actually quite easy. Just copy what is in the grid square.

A girl, one of these students with kute names like Kylie, Kammie, Karilynn, or Krystal, tells me it is too hard, and then she asks me The Question.

“How is this going to help me in later life?”

My first response is to say something mean, like, “Well, it probably won’t help you,  because you are going to spend your adult life behind a dusty cash register in a Maverick somewhere, and then go home to your seven lean, dusty children and cook Hamburger Helper for dinner.”

I’ve had my moments, though, with Kimmie-Krystal or whoever she is–and her dad. Papa wants Kimmie to succeed in art and he wants her to be respectful to me. The least I can do is try to return the favor, so I say, “I don’t know, Krystal. Life is long, and you are very young. You still have so much ahead of you. . . .”

In truth, there is no way to know how Shakespeare, Mozart,  Brunelleschi, Annie Dillard, or Frank Lloyd Wright will help any particular student in his or her later life. We adults know that bits and pieces of our educations pop up at very odd times to save or inspire us.

In the meantime, we teachers chant to ourselves, “Patience, kindness, courtesy. . . ” and try not to explode when a youngster pops The Question. Perhaps our restraint, in itself, will be a lesson in itself, for “later life.”