Project 5: Non-Objective Visual Communication
Students first learned what the title of the project meant. To understand non-objective art and how it is different from realistic and abstract art, students sorted paintings into different piles. They learned that visual communication means communicating through our vision, not with writing or speaking. We discussed the non-objective work of Joan Miro, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Piet Mondrian. By examining their work, students shared what they thought the artist was feeling when they created the work. Wassily Kandinsky believed that you could transfer what you heard into something you could see. Looking at examples of his work, students guessed what genre of music he was listening to while he created it. Listening to three segments of different music students practiced drawing what they heard.
For the final project students could choose between visually communicating an emotion or a song. They had to communicate non-objectively using the 7 Elements of Art: line, color, texture, shape, form, value, and space. To do this, students had to use at least three different materials of their choice: oil pastels, watercolor, tempera, colored pencil, crayons, markers, and anything else the student wanted to add. The size of their final work had to be 2 feet x 2 feet or larger. In the end we held our first critique where students shared their work and got peer feedback.
