Mini Lesson 4-Nikita

Mini Lesson 4
“Learning From the Masters”

Enduring Big Idea: Nature of Originality—What it means to create unique and individual art, and where it comes from in terms or art history.

Essential Questions:
• Does art always have to be original?
• Do artists ever reproduce a work of a master artist?
• Why would you want to produce artwork which wasn’t original?
• How do artists train today? How did artists train in the past?
• Why do artists copy other artists both directly and concptually?
• Are people born artists or do the develpp to become artists?
• What do we learn through directly copying a master’s work?
• Why are art schools run differently today than in the past?
• Does one tradition of artist training work better or produce different results?

Objectives: The students will…
• Learn about the history of academic modes of artist training.
• Explore how artists use each other’s ideas and techniques.
• Explore reproductions versus conceptual influence in various Madonna and child paintings, odalisques, and specifically look at_______________.
• Learn basic painting techniques through a “fuzzy slide” reproduction of an old master’s painting.

Lesson Vignette:
1. Anticipatory Set:
• We will have a group discussion and speak to the various essential questions. The main points of emphasis will be placed on academic modes of artist training, and how, when, and why it is appropriate to directly reproduce an artwork. We will also discuss the basics of oil painting such as fat over lean, basic gray-scale color mixing, and brush care.
2. Body of Lesson:
• For the main portion of the lesson, students will spend three one hour class periods working on a “fuzzy slide” reproduction of ______________. This technique is used to teach students the correct way of attempting to execute a fine tuned/large scale painting in a way that will not overwhelm them nearly as much as just saying “copy this”. The teacher takes a slide (or digital variation) and puts in to an overhead out of focus to an extreme degree so all that is visible is a few basic lights and darks. About every 15-20 minutes the teacher will focus the image a bit more, until on the last period of time on the last day, it is fully in focus. The students will then be encouraged to take a copy of the image home and work on the most fine tuned details as homework for about an hour or so.
3. Closure:
• We will put all of the paintings up on the board and compare. This will not be a formal critique but used to show how originality comes into play in art even when every artist is trying to reproduce the same image. Emphasis will be placed on how every artist sees the world differently, and how this comes across in their art to produce original images. We will have a short turn back to the essential question of academic artist training, and speak to how they think each technique would work now that they have attempted both.