We Paint a Picture in My Graphic Arts and Web Design Class

In my Graphic Arts and Web Design Classes, we have been learning stuff right along for the first 7-8 weeks of school. Most of what we have been learning is building to the last couple of projects that we will be doing, The Song, The Monkey Wrench and The Quilt.

We have started doing The Song project over the last day or so. Last class period, in both of my Graphic Arts/Web Design Classes, I had them listen to a reading, then a playing of the song "The River" by Bruce Springsteen. It is a song about a young man with dreams that gets his girlfriend pregnant, marries her and has a miserable life. Nice topic, huh? It is easy to identify with and relate to for teenagers, though. We analyzed the song, what it means, etc.

The kids then had to pick a song that has meaning for them. I wanted them to locate a song that fills them with feeling, memory, angst, images, whatever. Kids took that song's lyrics and gave me a couple of paragraphs outlining why that song and why they thought it was important in their life.

Today, I played another song, one of my favorites, called "The Eye of the Hurricane." It is a song by folk singer David Wilcox, wherein a young lady rides her motorcycle too fast to escape her miserable life and then one day, in a rain storm, has a truck pull out in front of her. She dies. Another nice song. But actually, the theme and the actions of the song are easily understood by high school kids. We analyzed the meaning of the song and then talked about creating a picture from the song.

The kids gave me all of the shapes, colors and images that they thought should be included in the artwork. I then gave a little assignment to everyone in the class, to get me an image for the work, or draw me a shape in the right color, etc. Once I had all of these images, we began to sort through them and create our picture. It turned out pretty well, considering we completed the creation of the composition in about 20 minutes. It was fun to hear the kids arguing over the images. "No, that's too big!" "That should go on the other side!" "She doesn't look right there, put her over there!" "The flowers should be red, not white!"

Now, the kids know what to do in the creation of their own song painting.