THE Marker Project

After a couple meetings and a lot of thinking, Mr. Angelis and I came up with an outline of the project, the students would be able to choose out of two options. This is the outline we came up with:
"For this project you will have two choices, you can either choose to create a piece of artwork with mainly design-like qualities, or you can choose an approach more focused on a realistic and abstract piece of art. You will have to choose one of these and will have to choose a focus or topic which corresponds with your choice.

Design-like Approach
If you choose that you’re more into the design-like techniques that markers are great for, you’ll also have different criteria that we will grade you on. You want to try and create a piece of artwork that looks neat and almost as if it was printed. Choose some topic that you’re interested in and has design-like qualities, you can always ask us for help.

Abstract Approach
If you’re one of those people that enjoys abstract and realistic pieces of work, you’ll most likely want to go with the Abstract Approach to the marker project. The point is to go with “loose” lines and to really take it in almost any way you’d like. You can pick a topic or you can go with whatever you’re feeling like doing, just be aware of the rubric we have for this approach."

With this outline and general idea as to what we expected of them, we showed them the pictures I posted earlier and took questions. They seemed to understand what we were looking for pretty well and they started to come up with ideas and started planning out their work.

Preparation for the Marker Project

Using the research I did over the summer, I started to analyze the differences in artist techniques and styles. It appeared that there were two different styles when it came to marker use, some artists prefer to create design-like artworks that are very tight with clean lines, something that would look like it could be computer generated because the artwork overall is very neat like the example below.

 

Other artists may choose to create a more realistic and abstract type of artwork, they have a different style and technique when they use markers. These types of artists often prefer "loose" strokes and blended colors. Of course there are many other styles but these two seem to be the two main styles. Mr. Angelis and I decided that these two were indeed the two most extreme styles. (Example of the realistic styles below.)

As soon as I knew that it'd be smart to give the students two options for the project, I started to think about what comes into a project in which students have a choice. I realized that not only did I have to try and communicate my thoughts and expectations of this project as well as create a rubric and outline so the students know exactly what I want and so that they have it on paper.

The First Weeks

It took a while for me to get into the classroom. It took 3 weeks of running around getting signatures, printing packets, writing letters of intent and other things that just delayed me from getting to what I really wanted to be exploring. I was honestly getting a little bit frustrated just because I really wanted to get to teaching the class and sharing my knowledge as well as trying to find a way to communicate the lessons and techniques successfully. However, I managed to get my paperwork revised and finally accepted by the Senior Experience committee and was able to start working and researching not too long after that.

Summer Preparation

For the first semester of my senior year at Joel Barlow, I'll be student teaching a drawing class along with my teacher, advisor and friend, Mr. Angelis. Over the summer I had researched a lot of possibilities for projects in the class so that me and Mr. Angelis could hit the ground running when it came to designing projects and lessons for the students. Before I had left for the summer, we had met a couple of times and he put me in charge of one of our projects, a marker project. What that entailed was creating a piece of art that uses only sharpie markers or colored markers so that it teaches students to dive right into a drawing without hesitation because that is often an artist's biggest downfall. So I looked for some images online just to get some inspiration for what I would like to do and where I'd like to take the project I got to design (pictures below.) Over the summer I pretty much just dipped my toes in the water as to what I'm getting myself into, I pretty much just spent some time exploring the techniques and materials included with the marker project.