#1872. The Crowd

Art, level: Senior
Posted Fri Jul 28 08:39:49 PDT 2000 by Brian Caleb Dumm (ccdumm@csrlink.net).
Brian Caleb Dumm
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA
Materials Required: basic
Activity Time: 1-2 weeks
Concepts Taught: Illustrating emotions, (line, depth, expression)

Lesson Plan Example
"The Crowd"
Brian Caleb Dumm

Demographic

Prerequisites; (Art I)
This lesson is incorporated into a unit for high school juniors and seniors in art. It is set up as a final piece in a unit dealing
with line, emotion, and depth. It requires a good bit of problem solving and creative thought, combined with a necessary grasp
of basic visual technical skills. For this assignment as with most art projects it would be more beneficial to have a smaller
number of students in the class to allow the most personal conditions for teacher support. However, because this project
requires problem solving and creativity, it is also designed to let the student succeed without a lot of teacher intervention.

Conditions

Since this is a lesson for an Art II class, or Advanced Art class, it requires the students to have a certain level of basic artistic
experience. The lesson will be accompanied by slides of other works of art and a lecture/disscussion dealing with related
images that successfully use line, emotion and depth.
Along with the slides, I will give personal, in class demos on ways to use these techniques.

Some Suggested Materials

Sketch paper
(Final Piece to be done on bristol board)
Pencils (6H - 6B)
Pen/Ink
Charcoal
Conte crayon
Colored pencil (if the student chooses to work in color)

Objective

The students will compose and illustrate a scene in which a crowd of some kind, (people, animals, monsters, etc.), is reacting
to some event happening out of the field of vision of the viewer. In other words, the event that the crowd is reacting to will not
be shown. Viewers of the final pieces will then be asked to make guesses and observations as to what the crowd is reacting to.

Goals

This project is designed to have many goals. One of these goals is to develop the idea of emotional expressions in a work.
The crowd is designed to represent all of the emotional possibilities, (anger, surprise, sadness, joy, etc.), that can be illustrated
in a work of art. It teaches an important lesson about the power of images. The class will gain a better understanding of how
to interpret works of art through their class critique. While making guesses about their peers' work, they will be reading into the
piece being shown. On this level, "The Crowd" asks the students to participate in the art rather than simply viewing it.
"The Crowd" also demands that the student go through a creative process of composing, cropping, editing, inventing and so
forth, until they finally arrive at a composition that effectively answers the problem.

Evaluation

Grading will be based on teacher critique, taking into mind comments made during a class critique. The evaluation will measure
the students progress in developing a concept through sketches, photo references, thumbnails, etc. As well as their level of
creativity and technique.