Monday, September 28, 2015

Create > Visual Pun Photographs

Create > Visual Pun Photographs


Goal:  Create a series of 3 visual puns from figures of speech that sound alike or have double meaning.

Studio Activity:
  • Search puns and figures of speech that sound alike or have double meanings.
watchdog
pen pals
bookworm
license plates
car pool
eggbeater
coat of arms
arms race
2nd hand store
attached to his dog
backhand
6 feet under
fast food
offspring
Gatorade
water gun
boxing match
Wisdom Tooth
night owls
Horse Fly
navel orange
pie in the sky
fan club
tow truck
brainwashed
brainstorm
walnut
sea star
lighthouse
rainbow
handyman
pen pal
home run
funny bone
double header
hotdog
  • You may want to speak with an English teacher.
  • Stage a photoshoot that visualizes your pun or figure of speech

Trigger Mechanisms:  Mix-media, metaphor, fantasize

Visual Examples:
Visual Pun Photo Contest > http://goo.gl/2T2P24 or http://goo.gl/kCahC
Check out this Map of ‘Punny’ business > http://goo.gl/CwJrmy





I have my head in the clouds > Scott Klein

Monday, September 14, 2015

Create > Contemporary Issue Photo Essay

Create > Contemporary Issue Photo Essay


Concept:
A social, ethical or moral issue can be visually signified.

Goal:
Create a series of 12 related images portraying your views on a contemporary issue.

Access Prior Knowledge:
Instructional Strategy
  • Cues and Questions
Learning Activity
Social Dialogue > Socratic Seminar > What are you passionate about?

New Information:
Instructional Strategy
  • Cooperative Learning
Learning Activity
Research > Sample contemporary photo essays

Instructional Strategy
  • Deepen Understanding
Learning Activity
Understand >
Apply Knowledge & Skills:
Instructional Strategy
  • Nonlinguistic Representations
Learning Activity
Create > Contemporary Issue Photo Essay
  1. Portray your views on a contemporary issue such as: politics, gun control, endangered species, capital punishment, terrorism, poverty, open campus, women’s issues...  
  2. Choose and research a topic of importance or special interest to you that will be the subject of your own social-documentary project, presented in the form of a photo essay.  
  3. Present the essay as a series of 12 related photographs focusing on a specific topic.
  4. Include captions or other meaningful text.

Trigger Mechanisms: Empathize, Symbolize

Getting Started:
  1. Write down topics for your photo essays
  2. Brainstorm ideas for how to visually express them.
  3. Brainstorm interview questions for individuals you may photograph as part of the project.
  4. List the strategies for telling your story, keeping in mind the definition of “social documentary.”
  5. Research your topic then write a plan summarizing the story you hope to tell in photos.
  6. Create a title for the essay.
  7. Shoot a whole lot of photographs for your photo essay. The images should collectively tell the key story you defined and described earlier.
  8. During photo shoot, interview their subjects and record responses.
  9. Select texts from your interview materials and draft any captions for images you will include in the final grouping of images.  
  10. From your series of photographs, choose the essential ones to crop and edit.
  11. Prepare these essential essay photographs for printing.  
  12. Lay out your photo essay prints and texts.
  13. Mount and artfully arrange your images on heavy tag board interspersing them with text derived from your interviews. (This approach approximates the way in which photo essays were most often presented in magazines and other publications.)
  14. Include a final 50 to 100 word written essay summarizing of your contemporary issue.
  15. You may also make accordion books in which to present their images.  
  16. Read the Handout titled How to Make Art Books. > http://goo.gl/xzywZ

Generalize, Reflect & Publish:
Instructional Strategy
  • Evaluate the results
Learning Activity
Reflect > Should I go back and rework anything?
  • How did you combine art elements (line, color, shape, texture, value)  to develop art principles? (Unity/variety, balance, emphasis contrast, rhythm, proportion/scale, figure/ground relationship)
  • Where are the dominant shapes, forms, colors, or textures that carry expressive significance?
  • Why Is the work ordered and balanced or chaotic and disturbing?
  • What gives the work its uniqueness?
  • Is symbolism used in the work to convey meaning other than what one sees?
  • Does the work evoke any feelings?

Instructional Strategy
  • Providing Recognition
Learning Activity
Publish > Share your album to our G+Community > Concepts & Creations category
Display > Add your photos to the Event

Instructional Strategy
  • Providing Feedback
Learning Activity
Critique >
  • Give positive feedback > +1 every image that deserves it
  • Give peer feedback > Give 2 peer images a VTS critique > http://goo.gl/1WWmBY
Self-assess >

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Create > Upside Down Drawing


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Create > Upside Down Drawing

Goal: Create a mindful switch from the verbal to the spatial state of consciousness

Concept:
Drawing upside-down provides the right conditions to consciously recognize and experience the spatial state of consciousness.

Familiar things do not look the same when they are upside down. Inverted drawing forces you to shift from the verbal mode to the spatial mode.

Studio Activity:
Understand, that by inverting an image, forms become unrecognizable and ‘nameless’.  this turns down the dominant verbal state of thinking (you don’t name things) and allows the spatial state greater moment to moment awareness.  The spatial state of awareness like mindful meditation induces positive and satisfying emotional consciousness that lasts long after.
  1. Prepare with a  blank page, a pencil and the image I give you.
  2. Take a deep breath and prepare not to speak for 30 minutes.
  3. Turn the image upside down and like Trukese sailor navigate by constantly checking and rechecking visual qualities.  For example; this line goes up and to the left, starting halfway down the middle of the page and ending near the upper left edge of the paper.
  4. Do not speak or attempt to name things.

Trigger Mechanisms: Awareness, Silence, Observation

Generalize, Reflect & Publish:
Instructional Strategy
  • Evaluate the results
Learning Activity
Reflect > Should I go back and rework anything?
  • How did you combine art elements (line, color, shape, texture, value)  to develop art principles? (Unity/variety, balance, emphasis contrast, rhythm, proportion/scale, figure/ground relationship)
  • Where are the dominant shapes, forms, colors, or textures that carry expressive significance?
  • Why Is the work ordered and balanced or chaotic and disturbing?
  • What gives the work its uniqueness?
  • Is symbolism used in the work to convey meaning other than what one sees?
  • Does the work evoke any feelings?

Instructional Strategy
  • Providing Recognition
Learning Activity
Publish > Share your album to our G+Community > Concepts & Creations category
Respond > in the comment section write the following reflection.
  • Obviously you can’t always turn things upside down (models, still lifes or landscapes) so your goal is to be able to look like an artist.  What will that take?

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Egon Schiele

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Pablo Picasso. Portrait of Igor Stravinsky. 1920. Graphite. Musée Picasso, Paris, France

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Pieter Brueghel the Younger from theIconography; etching by Van Dyck

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Albrecht Durer My Agnes

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Edgar Degas