Reflections on Processes

Well I have survived in-service week with a feeling of success and apprehension.  Success in that the workshop (in-service training for the county art teachers) went well.  Apprehension in that I'm not sure I'm ready for the students on Tuesday.  Working on getting my classrooms and plans ready, my independent study for grad school, coaching field hockey and running the kids around to their orientations left me exhausted and stressed by the end of the week.  So to De-stress I decided to do some art.  Well, art in that I continued working on my samples for my 3D Design 1st student project.  After I had spray painted the relief face yellow the paint started to peel from the card board.  So wait for it to dry, scrape off and go at it with green.  I wasn't getting the result I wanted so I decided to test out adding tissue paper to join the different levels.  Didn't work.  So then I stepped back looked at it.  Well it was Supposed to be a portrait of my daughter.  It looked like a really old version of her.  Maybe it needed more height to bring out the cheeks and not be so flat.  Added a few more layers, painted them.  Still not happy.  I had been working outside because of the spray paint.  It was getting dark so I put it away for the night and I'll go back to it today.

Needs work, still looks like old lady

Seems too flat still in the face

Edges of the relief

Even though I was not so happy with the way the artwork was going the process of working on it calmed my brain enough that thoughts of how to continue to build my lessons began to flow through my head.  I had originally thought that I would steer my students toward using one color of paint for their surface treatment.  In the style of Louise Nevelson, they would build with multiple boards and use color to unify the entire work.  Well.... Students will be using all boards to build their relief sculpture, not various materials.  So in essence their work is unified my the building material and using only one color isn't so nearness for unification.  While I still want to discuss and have students investigate the symbolic meaning of color with this project, the use of multiple colors may actually enhance their artwork.  The variety in color may actually express more about their personality than a single color.  But how to do it is now the question.  I think I will revisit the tissue paper idea, but also experiment with paint too.  The only problem with paint is that because of having 25 students in the class, tempra paint or spray paint is my only option.  Acrylic and oil are out because of the amount that would be needed and the cost of the paint is too much for my budget.  Maybe I need to start by spray painting the entire sculpture with white.  This may make the colors more vibrant than painting directly on the brown card board.