Problem:  Choose an article from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to illustrate by creating a linoleum block print.

Objective:  Students will learn how to make a linoleum block print and use line, pattern, texture, and contrast in their print.  They will include symbolism and use exaggeration.  They will learn different printing techniques such as off-set, hand colored, and multiple colored inks. 

Description:  Students will study the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  The UDHR outlines the basic human rights for every person on the planet such as the right to housing, fair wages, no torture, no slavery, the right to marry who you want, and many other provisions.  Students will choose an article to illustrate by creating a linoleum block print.

Objectives:  Students will learn color theory and painting techniques by painting a color wheel using only primary colors, black and white.
Description:  Students will learn about tints, shades, complementary, analogous, monochromatic, and triadic colors.  They will also learn how to paint gradations of tints and shades. 

Objective:  Students will paint a still life of toys based on observation.  They will practice color mixing. 

Description:  Students will use tempera paint to paint small still lives of toys.  They will use what they learned from the color wheel exercise to create different values in paint.  They will also create interesting compositions that zoom in and go off the page.

Problem: Using charcoal and both additive and subtractive drawing techniques students will draw a still life with elliptical and cube forms in order to make informed choices when choosing compositions and creating the illusion of form through light and shade.
Objectives:   Students will draw values while avoiding lines in order to create the illusion of three-dimensional form.  Students will use additive and subtractive drawing with charcoal.  Students will understand the compositional techniques of altering the size, placement, and point of view. 
Description: Students will learn how to shade simple objects with charcoal.  They will learn how light hits an object and creates: a highlight, a light side, a dark side, reflected light, and a cast shadow.  They will use different values to give the illusion of three-dimensions and they will avoid using dark lines.  They will draw blocks, a ping pong ball, and a simple still life made up of cylindrical objects.  

Objectives:  Students will activate right-brain thinking by doing a series of drawing exercises.  Students will learn to see shapes rather than objects.  Students will observe objects to draw and they will accurately draw a small still-life.
Description:  Students will do the following exercises to activate right-brain thinking:  drawing up-side down, blind contour drawing, contour drawing, negative space drawing, contour drawing of plants and skulls. 

Objectives:  Students will create a cover design for their sketchbooks using visual journaling techniques.  Students will learn layering, collage, added text, and mixed media techniques. 
Description:  Students will learn painting techniques, the difference between good collage and bad collage, and how to add text artistically.

Problem:  Create a black/white design based on your initials using fonts as your inspiration

Objectives:  Students will create symmetrical designs based on their initials.  Students will create designs with contrast and pattern.

Description:
This problem is based on fonts and their design qualities.  You will look at many different kinds of fonts and choose three and draw your initial in those fonts.  Next you will create a design based on your initial and a font.  You will repeat the design four times, each time it will be a mirror image of the previous drawing.  Finally, you will create a drawing with contrast and pattern.

In this class you will be given the tools and methods to enable you to understand the visual world in which we live. You will have the opportunity to develop this understanding through the discovery of your own unique solutions to a variety of art problems.  The solutions you create will come from a multitude of media experimentations and will take the form of many wonderful and personal prints, drawings, sculptures, collages, paintings, and craft objects.  

 To inspire and direct you through the process of making these works we will look at and examine the work of artists who have come before you, and also the artists who are working along side of you in the world today.  You will discover and experience the methods that artists used to create art: the research, the sketches, the preliminary studies, the experimentation with media, the final refined work, and the critique or reflection on that work.

This class is a pre-requisite for Photo I, II, III, IV, and Art II, III, IV.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Thomas Merton