I will be taking part in a team to
organise, design and install a mural at local secondary school. The mural will
be used to decorate a long corridor in the art department. We had an initial
meeting to introduce the idea, and to inform us of what is expected of us, and
what parts we will play in the whole process. I didn’t attend the discussion
with the head of the art department, but during our meeting we were told that
art students, years 8 and 9 will be involved in the design process, and it will
be our job to plan what we are going to do, and present our ideas to the
students, guide them when creating their artwork, and we will then install the
work. From the meeting we came up from a basic, generic idea for the project.
The mural will be centred around nature, there will be tall steams climbing up
the wall, with flower, fruits and leaves branching of them which the children
will create themselves. We discussed how we needed to limit the material
colours, and shapes of the fruits, flowers and leaves, otherwise the mural will
look very confusing and messy. Therefore, we decided that we will design templates
which the children will then draw and paint on, we will have a limited colour
palette, and provide them with examples of the sort of thing we are looking
for, this way we hope to limit the art work a little so that when placed all
together that the mural looks cohesive. Once the designs were complete we would
then gather them back in touch up the designs on Photoshop, and then photocopy
them onto newsprint, which when printed on gives a glossy shine to the image,
which can withstand water. These templates along with our steams will be laid
out and designed ready to be starch pasted onto the corridor wall. Starch paste
is a safe, and easy way to apply flat pieces of paper to the wall, the
newsprint will absorb the paste, and because it is water soluble can be removed
and changed around if needed. We started to brain storm a few ideas of the
style of template we were going to design. Our team leader had already made a Pinterest
board full of ideas, including wall paper, pattern and surface design. We
design to look at Scandinavian patterns and shapes, which are very abstract,
bold and stylised. Because of the boldness of the patterns it will be easier
for the students to add their own patterns and colours to the shapes, adding
their own stamp and personality to their artwork. We also discussed how we
could possible integrate the student personality into their artwork whilst
still limiting what materials and what colours they use. We thought of how
possible it would be to ask them to interpret themselves using patterns and
colours, this may be difficult, but we shall experiment and try it out
ourselves before we brief it to the students. We also discussed a possible
colour scheme of royal blue, green, red and a ochre yellow, hoping that these
simple colours will be easy for the school to get hold of. We have decided that
instead of a using black for the line work, we will use a royal blue line,
which has a stroke of 3mm. We thought that black may be a little strong and
distract from the art work, and regulating our line thickness will hopefully
ensure that our template, though different will look similar.
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| Initial discussion from our Facebook messaging chat |
Our first step was to design templates, in
order to share the work load, we were each allocated either leaves, flowers or
fruits to design. We all agreed that we needed to design at least 3 templates,
this would ensure that the students had lots of template to choose from,
meaning the mural will look less like a pattern. I was allocated fruits, and
will therefore lots of usual fruits to take inspiration from and will produce 3
designs in response. My only concern is that our group is made up of 10 people,
who all have different styles and ideas, meaning that our template will be
completely different, and my worry is that when placed all together, they may
look completely different, and not like a unit.
In order to communicate with one another,
throughout the project we have set up a Facebook chat, and have all linked
ourselves to the Pinterest board which our team leader has made, this way we
can add any other inspirational images that we see, and refer back to our
original plan if we need too, so everyone remains on the same page.
A link to our Pinterest board, initiated by our team leader, but added to by the rest of the team.
https://uk.pinterest.com/corkelisious/pittville/
After conducting this research, I designed these templates below. I first drew my designs out using black felt pen, and then scanned them into Adobe Illustrator, imaged traced and line work, to ensure the quality of lines were smooth, and changed the line colour to a royal blue as discussed, with a stroke of 3mm.
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| Chinese Lantern Fruit |
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| A dragon Fruit |
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| A Pomegranate Fruit |
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| A Star fruit |
A week after our first meeting we then gave
our designs to our team leader. I was actually thoroughly surprised that when
all of the design we laid our together that they didn’t look odd, they
strangley looked like a collection, I think this was thanks to us agreeing upon
guidelines.
Our next job was to cut all of the cartridge
paper down to size, which we will use to then print our templates onto ready
for the students to design on. We were
kind enough that the illustration department allowed us to use their sheets of
A1 cartridge paper, so as a team we worked out a system to efficiently cut all
the sheets of paper down to A4 size. As there was a fair few of us cutting down
the paper, I took charge of organising the template into the 3 different categorises,
leaves, fruits and flowers, and working out how many we had and how many of each
template we needed to print. There would be 2 classes of around 30 children
working on this project, but we wanted the students to have lots of choice our
what template they used, and we expected that some students would design more
than one piece of artwork, therefore we decided to print 200 templates. We had
25 designs which meant that there would be around 8 copies of each template.
As I was organising the templates, ready for photocopying I noticed at a couple needed resizing as they were a little small and some of the shades of blue were a little of, so I resized them by scanning in artwork back in and used Photoshop to alter them.
In preparation for photocopying we counted out piles of 8 pieces’ cartridge paper for each template. With everything set we began photocopying the template in colour onto the cartridge paper, which when then organised and stacked into a box ready for the students.
Below are a few photographs from the session.
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| All of the template we had created and I had resized |
Creating the hand out
In preparation for photocopying we counted
out piles of 8 pieces’ cartridge paper for each template. With everything set
we began photocopying the template in colour onto the cartridge paper, which
when then organised and stacked into a box ready for the students.
We thought that we needed to clarify what
kind of thing we wanted the students to draw and paint on the templates. We
initially wanted them to express their personality in their design, but when we
tried to do this we found it pretty much impossible. So then I suggested that
they could some who sign or stamp their initials into their artwork, which
would personalise their work.
In order to demonstrate the kind of thing
we wanted the students to be inspired by, I was asked to create some kind of
hand out for the students to refer to. This work sheet I thought should contain,
a brief over view of the project, instructions, examples of the type of
patterns and shapes they could include, and a reminder of the colours they need
to use. After consulting and finalising without team leader, we printed 30 A4
copies of the work sheet, which is below.
Experiments and Practising
Before we went to the school to introduce
the project to the students, we wanted to produce a couple of coloured examples
to show the children what we wanted. We were told by the teachers that the
students would have access the paint which we thought would be the best
material to use to achieve flat colours, as used in Scandinavian artwork. We
didn’t have any acrylic paint to use so instead used gouache. Below are the
results.
One of my teammates used pencil crayon
instead of paint, it is clear that this didn’t work as effective as the paint,
as the colour wasn’t as flat and the strokes were visible. This was partially
noticed when we photocopied the images onto newsprint to test how our designs
translate onto newsprint. Actually the photocopied versions look a better and
cleaner than the original, the colours has flattened out further, and because
of the darker, textured, grey paper the colours looked a lot nicer, and more
like the colours swats we had picked out. From this experiment we now know that
out methods and ideas will work, and now have a greater understanding of what
we want the children to produce, and a better visual idea of what the overall,
finished piece will look like.
The next stage of our project will be to
visit the local school to introduce the project and to help the students to
start their designs.
Evaluation
From the organisation, inventing and
creating stage of this experience I have learnt how to brain storm initial
ideas of each other, how to form a solid brief the students are able to
understand and follow, which is thoroughly throughout and testified. I feel
that I have exceeded in working and communicating in a teach environment, and
have been a valid part of the team and project so far, having attended all of
the meetings, helped in preparing materials, equipment and producing a handout
for the students to refer to. I think so far this experience has been a
positive one, as simply everything is going to plan and we have hit all of our
deadlines. From this experience I have gained an insight into how art projects
are organised and the extensive work and research which is needed to get it off
the ground, learning that you need to very clear understanding of the project
and needed to have tested it out to ensure its success. Next time I am involved
in the start-up of a new project I will try and take my own notes during the
meetings as none of us did so some of the messages carried around were a little
confusing, and I will undertake more research surrounding whatever the project
encounters.
Visit
1
We arrived early at the, signed in and was
greeted at reception by one of the art teachers and guided us to the art room.
We were shown the corridor which leads to the art room, where we install the
mural. I had seen photographs of it, but in real life it looked a lot bigger than
expected, the corridor corner is curved which will add an interesting feature
to the mural. What will to difficult is working the designs around the display
boards, whether we are about the stick thing over the panels to integrate the
boards into the design is another matter for discussion and experimentation.
Today we were introduced to a class of year
8 students, we all introduced ourselves, and our team leader began explaining
the project and what we would like the students to contribute to it. In the meantime,
as we had little time, the rest of us began handing out the resources, the hand
outs and templates. After the introduction and the students had asked a few
questioned, they were then invited to choose a template. I was interested to
see what template designs were the most popular. Especially with the boys the
designs which were less abstract and stylised, and more recognisable like to
pineapple and strawberry template, whereas the girls seemed to prefer the
flower templates.
We gave the students to get settled and
start working on their designs, and then we began circling the rom interacting
with the students. Just like us the students were a little nervous, quiet and
slightly intimidated by us, but as the lesson progressed they began to open up
and talk to us more so.
The teacher of the class had instructed the
students to draw out their designs using pencil before painting. However, so of
the students got very caught up in designing their template, and included lots
of tiny details, which would have been impossible to paint. So we did have to
step in and just explain that it may be best if they painted the large flat
areas of colour first, and then went back in with a finer brush or even felt
pen to add in the detail and patterns.
We helped to students who were struggling
with their initial designs, giving them ideas of how they could break up the
template using lines and colour, and pointing them to examples of patterns from
the worksheet. The most challenging part of the task for the students was actually
mixing the paint as not all the colours were ready made, and I helped students
answer many questions about the colour wheel.
As the session progress the students
started to paint their designs. We were a little concerned that some of the
paint work may be a little rushed, messy and the colours wouldn’t lie flat on
the paper, but we were proven wrong. I expected some of the students to be a
little disinterested in the project, but actually they were very enthusiastic,
and worked hard designs and painting their designs carefully. So our concerns
about the quality of the images was put at rest.
Nearly our whole team attended the school
visit, which meant that there was a large force of us. The class room was
rather small, so we found it rather difficult to navigate ourselves around the
space, and I think perhaps there were to many of us. The students were
definitely not intimidated by us, but I felt that sometimes we would get on top
of one another, and perhaps next time it would be better with a less people, so
we don’t end up wandering around so much.
We left the lesson a little earlier to
allow the students, as they were settled to continue working on their designs. Upon
reflection I think for our next visit we possible need to think about a set of instructions
for the students to follow, which will provide the best results. The teach
instructed the students to use pencil to draw out their design on the template,
but the student were adding so much fine detail making it impossible to paint,
so they were having to paint over their designs completely. So it may be an
idea to point out this to the students before they start, or provide them with
a second piece of paper, or another rough template, to practise their design on
beforehand.
Visit 2
As we were all prepared for out second
visit, and were much more prepared on what to expect from the students. As
before we were meet again by the same teacher as before, and were introduced to
the Head of Art who would be teaching the class we would be presenting the
project to. After our team leader had introduced the project, and presented
them with what they needed to do, and the rest of us had organised and handed
out the resources, the teacher gathered the students around a large table to discussed
and further clarify what they needed to do. The students had a few questions
regarding their template, such as could they complete more than one design and
could they mix colour, and how? The class teacher gave the students further
instructions and asked us the best way to start to design process. The students
from our last visit used pencil to sketch out their designs, but because they
were so fine the drawings were lost and became impossible to paint. From this
experience we learnt that it was perhaps best if the students felt confident
enough to apply a base layer of paint to the template first using a few pencil
marks for guidance. This way the students would waste less time drawing out
their designs, which would get painted over anyway. The teacher agreed with our
idea and the students set of to work. After allowing them to settle, we
wondered around the classroom and spoke to the students. There weren’t as many
of us as the last visit which made it a little easier in my mine as we weren’t
tipping over each other and didn’t feel like we were pestering the students too
much.
These students seemed very engaged and
willing to talk to us. I advised students on their design work, referring back
to the hand out I have made and gave them a couple of suggestions of how they could
break the template down into smaller segments to make it easier to design. This
time there were a few students who just simply didn’t know what patterns they
could paint, so I asked them questions about what kind of things they likes and
what fashion styles they likes, and helped them by drawing out a few ideas for
them to get them started. The response to this approached was a positive one
especially for those students who lacked a little creatively. As for the
creative students they seemed to flourish in creating something they freely
expressed themselves, and were not limited really to what they wanted to do. As
the paint came out fairly early on in the session we had a lot of questions
regarding colour mixing, how to water down paint, how to mop up accidents on
work, and generally painting techniques. The students seemed to love using
paint as it’s not a medium they are always allowed to use.
This session seemed to progress a little
better in my opinion than the first, even though we did leave the lesion early
to allow the students to continue their designs without us watching over them.
Our theory of design less with pencil and painting more appeared to be working
better, the designs were moving along quicker, and the students were realising
that they couldn’t really design something too detailed as it would be
impossible to paint neatly, therefore the designs became more refined and the
products were looking great. My only concern is when students start to layer
the paint over the top of one another the colour may start to merge, and look a
little muddy.
After this visit we all agreed that the
session had been successful, and were led out of the school. We now have to
wait about 6 weeks to return to pick up the designs, this time leaves the students
with another 2, 1 hour lessons to finish and refine their artwork.
The
Visit- Evaluation
Having worked with young children before,
this experience visiting the helping to introduce a project the secondary
school children, was a nice refresher and a new and insightful experience. This
experience so far has been enriching I have really enjoyed helped out in the
school environment I have loved the feeling of helping young people to find
their creativity and to try and inspire it, it’s a liberating feeling. This
experience has been a hugely positive one I was honestly a little nervous going
into the school for the first time, thinking that the students wouldn’t be
interested at all with the project and would neglect/ignore our advice, but
instead they embraced it and were eager to impress, a lovely feeling. There
wasn’t really another bad about the visits, yes there were things which we had
learnt from the first which we changed for out second visit, such as a few instructions
about how create your design, design less and paint more, but I don’t think
there was anything negative to be taken away. I actually believe that from the first
to the second visit my confidence soared I felt that talking to the students
became easier and more natural, I feel that because I am not much older than
the school children, and have only really just left a school setting, I was
able to ground myself to their level, wanting to talk to them as adults which
they seemed to like and respond to. I think this experience has opened my eyes
to teaching, a career which I thought I had shut the door on, but I think that
it could be an option. I feel that my previous experience working with young
people did aid my experience feeling that I knew what to expect and what was
expected of me. It can be concluded that my assumption of not wanting to teach
has been overwritten feeling that it could be a possible career path, hitting
toward older children rather than primary school age. I feel that as the
experience went on, although short I gained a lot of confidence and was nervous
about approaching a group of students and asking about their working, answering
questions, and asking whether they needed any advice. If I am placed in a
similar situation next time I will definitely try and become more confident,
feeling that children respond to adults who are confident and are more likely
to respect your opinions if you appear confident.
5th
May 2017
Myself and a couple of the team went to
collect the artwork from the students today, feeling a little apprehensive
about what the students had produced. At reception we were again met by the
Head of Art, who gave us back the finished artwork, and did mention that she
had neaten a few designs up using felt pens…
After returning with the design to
university, as a team we looked through the pile of artwork. We were actually
surprised by the designs they were highly patterned, neat and colourfully, everything
that we had wanted them to become. Some of the colours included were not the
ones we had asked to the students to use from the handout, this however we
expected due to having to mix colours, and students layering colour which them
merge, and not everyone had included their initials but that isn’t an issue. I
do think, and announced to the group that in order to try and achieve some kind
of uniformity between the colours we should have probably pre mixed some paint,
but we didn’t have the resources the schools did, but it is something we should
bare in mind for another project.
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| This is all of the artwork produced by the students |
Our next job was to resize and modify if
need to some of the designs, we were impressed by the cleanness of the artwork,
and therefore decided that it wasn’t necessary for the designs to be modified,
so all we needed to do what enlarge the A4 pieces of artwork to A3 and print
them onto newspaper. Our team was split into two, one half began cutting the A1
newsprint down into A3 sheets, whilst the remainder photocopied/enlarged on the
newsprint. As we had discovered during out test prints when the designs are
photocopied to whole image seems to flatted, the colour looks smoother, and the
designs become clearer as the image in enlarged. This is exactly what happened,
and we hope that the students are impressed and proud of what their work looks
like, and what can be done to it.
Below are a few examples of the work, comparing how the colour changing and flattens when it is photocopied onto the newsprint.
I also had another small job, for this blog
we wanted to record the whole process but because of child protection we aren’t
able to show everything, so it was my job also the Photoshop images, so they
would hopefully be expectable to use on our blogs to help record our
experience.
After all of the cutting, editing and
photocopying was complete, a couple from our group began cutting out the
designs. But there was a discussion about whether it was necessary to cut the
designs out leaving a boarder around the designs or not. From experience using
starch paste leaving a boarder where there is not printer ink, helps the
designs to stick to the wall, but as we will be using wall paper paste this may
not be necessary. So we decided as a team to not finish cutting out the
designs, to buy some wall paper paste and test out which way would be better,
aesthetically and practically.
So with that all said, we finished for the
day as there wasn’t anything we could do before testing the newsprint designs
with wall paper paste. Our installation however, for this project is out of the
deadline for this module hand in and there a few things that are still left the
organised an do beforehand. We need to experiment and practice pasting the
images onto a wall using wall paper paste, decided whether we need to leave a
boarder around the designs or not, the design and print stems which the flower,
fruit and leaf designs to sprout from, layout the images and plan where each
designs is roughly going to fit on the wall around the display cabinets and
then finally install the artwork, We have organised with the school that we
think we will need around 3, 3 hour sessions to complete the installation. As
we can’t install it during school hours as it would be too disruptive, we will
hopefully complete the process after school hours across 3 consecutive days,
along with the help of a few school students.
Evaluation
on the work experience so far…
This whole experience built up of many
different elements has been, and is still a fantastic experience. I have
experienced how such a huge project starts from the initial brain storming
session, full of crazy ideas, to experimenting and sourcing resources, to
actually presenting this project to groups of school children and helping them
out carrying out our visions. So far this project has been exciting and
informative, and I have developed many skills along the way, having helped in
the initial management and as resource creator it has given me a small insight
into the work of an art teacher. I have gained further confidence and knowledge
of how to approach and engage with young people, aiding them with their work
and creative skills. I feel that generally as a team we work cohesively,
organising meetings, when the visits were going to happen, what we were
planning to do when all of the work had been collective, and this has been
mainly possible because of the social media platforms we have been using. By
connecting everything together on a Facebook messaging chat we were all able to
engage in a conversation without all of us being together, and our Pinterest
board, which we were all apart of allowed us to add things to it which we
thought would be a useful resource and a tool for us to refer to for guidance in
our own template making. From this whole experience I have learnt that I
actually enjoyed working with secondary school aged children, I thrived guiding
them with their creative skills. I thought I had drawn a line under the teacher
profession but after this experience I have learnt that perhaps it is a
profession I may consider, possible not teaching in a school, but community
events, would be something I would like to experience more of. If I had another
opportunity to do something along these lines I would definitely like to get
more involved in the organisation of the event, I didn’t really communicate
with the school, so I think it would be a great opportunity if I could really
go behind the scenes and learn exactly what it’s like to organise such a
complex project.
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