Departments : Art Curriculum that Works :
Pictures of a New World
By John W. Healy
Art is a wonderful way to make students from other countries – including adopted children – feel at home
Girls who were adopted from Vietnam (above) and China (left) enjoy creating art with their mothers.
To care for another person is a basic human need. Such acts of caring may range from a simple gesture of kindness bestowed upon a stranger, to the lifelong commitment of raising a child.
Three teachers in my school recently adopted children from outside the U.S. The children come from China, India and Vietnam and their parents are finding out how difficult it can be to reach a child who already has a sense of cultural identity and an awareness of what makes them different.
Consider art activities as a way to contribute to the development of children from other countries who are entering our American homes and schools for the first time. By encouraging self-expression, children's art can transcend barriers of language and culture. Many rewarding experiences can come from the adventure of creating art.
Getting started
It's a good idea to invest in a variety of art materials so that children may choose what interests them. Prior cultural conditioning of the child is important to consider. A child may have a noticeable predisposition to certain art materials, colors and forms. If this is the case, you've got a great opportunity to build upon what is familiar to the child.
Explain and demonstrate the use of each art product, looking for a positive reaction from the child. Excitement may mean you've come upon a material that encourages the child's artistic expression.
A wealth of materials
Some art materials are better suited for children of certain ages. There are no set rules on this, however, since not all children develop at the same cognitive pace.
I've found that watercolor is ideal for younger children. When watercolor paper is wet, it allows for vibrant color mixing. Images often flow gracefully across the paper. To avoid frustration, it's a good idea to set a time limit so the children's watercolor paintings do not become overworked and muddy.
Markers are popular at all grade levels and come in a wide variety of colors. Young children have a tendency to hold markers in their fists and feel very comfortable doing so.
The use of templates can provide young artists with precision in drawing geometric and linear designs.
Sharing art materials with another person is a way of reaching out and showing that you care, you're interested in what that person has to express. Art is a non-competitive, communicative activity that can contribute to any child's cognitive and social development.
Excited about art
The mother of Sofia, a two-year-old girl adopted from India, told me that when she writes with a pen or pencil, Sofia immediately wants to know what's in her hand. Sofia often takes the writing instrument from her mother, then looks around for the drawing paper that is made accessible to her at various locations throughout the house.
She begins to draw with great excitement, creating exuberant pictures of her family and her dog, Abby – the beings with whom she can communicate, and who respond to her in a caring way. To see Sofia's artwork is to understand her new life in the United States; a life in which people love her and make her feel secure.
Our classrooms are filled with children like Sofia. Even if none of our students are adopted children, each of us teaches in a classroom filled with children who create art that expresses what is important to them. That's why art is important; a good art lesson is much more than a technical manipulation of watercolors, clay or some other art medium; it's a window of opportunity for children to show us a part of their world.
Maps of a new world
Even though art is an expressive activity, and Sofia and other adopted children may enjoy using it to connect their old lives to their new lives, it does contain several basic elements and principles. These concepts are important at all levels – from preK to eighth grade – for children to learn and apply. Once children know the basics, they can transfer that knowledge to a lifetime of creating art.
Used in an interdisciplinary format, these basic elements and principles are ideal guidelines for exploring and learning about the world through art. Literature, geometry, science and other subject areas may be associated with these concepts if we allow our reason and imagination to be unrestricted.
It's not worthwhile for students merely to be able to recite a laundry list of the principles of art without clear application and identification of these principles so, what follows is exactly that – examples of the application of the basic elements and principles of art. Think of these examples as a roadmap that will lead you into the exciting world of art. Once you know the lay of the land, you'll be free to explore and create. You can use each example sequentially with your students to teach them the principles of art in a vivid, memorable way. Feelings, emotions and an infinite number of ideas may be expressed with these fundamentals of art.
The elements of art
The elements of art are the basic visual symbols in the language of art. All works of art contain some or all of these elements, which are line, shape, form, space, color, value and texture.
Line: A line is an element of art that represents the path of a point moving through space. A contour line defines the edges and the surface ridges of an object.
Shape and form: These elements are commonly confused. Shape is a two-dimensional area that is defined in some way, i.e. by an outline or boundary around it. Forms are objects having three dimensions. Forms have length, width and depth, whereas shapes have only length and width.
The drawing on the left is a shape, but the drawing on the right is a form, because it has depth.
Space: Space is defined and determined by shapes and forms. Positive space is where shapes and forms exist; negative space is the empty space around shapes and forms.
The different colors of pink in the flower have different values – each reflects a different amount of light.
Color and value: Color is produced when light strikes an object and reflects back into your eyes. Value describes the darkness or lightness of a color. The amount of light a color reflects determines its color value.
Texture: Texture refers to how things feel or look as if they might feel.
The principles of art
These are the rules that govern how artists organize a work of art using the elements I've just described. The principles of art include rhythm, movement, balance, proportion, variety, emphasis, harmony and unity.
Rhythm and movement: Rhythm indicates movement and is achieved by the repetition of elements in a piece of artwork. Movement is used to create the feeling of action and to guide the viewer's eyes through a piece of artwork.
This repeating pattern has rhythm and draws your eye across the page, achieving movement.
Balance and proportion: Balance is concerned with equalizing visual forces or elements in a piece of artwork. Proportion is concerned with the size relationships between various elements of the artwork.
These three flowers show variety, but it's not difficult to tell which one is dominant, or emphasized. This painting also shows harmony, in that the flowers are similar, yet not identical. Its "complete" appearance indicates unity.
Variety and emphasis: Variety involves including different things in a piece artwork, or treating similar elements in varied ways. Including different thicknesses of line on a figure, or varying lengths of line in a drawing, are ways of achieving variety in a work of art. Emphasis enhances variety by creating areas of the piece of artwork that draw the viewer's attention and focus. This causes one part of the artwork to become dominant over the other parts.
Harmony and unity: Harmony creates unity by stressing the similarities of separate but related elements in the piece of artwork. Unity is the quality of wholeness or oneness that is achieved in a work of art through the effective use of the elements and principles of art. A painting in which every part of the painting seems to be helping and complementing every other part of the painting could be said to have unity.
Children can use these elements and principles in infinite combinations. Let's encourage our students to find the combinations that express something about their world.
Dr. John W. Healy teaches art at Woodland Middle School, East Meadow, NY.
November/December, 2003, Vol.34, No.3
