Monday was spent discussing what we make art about; that's the theme. And what we make art of; that's the subject matter.
I treated subject matter in Art the way you can treat the subject of a sentence: the thing you are looking at or talking about. A subject is a noun: a person, place, or thing (or idea). It answers the questions "Who?" "What?" and "Where?" In Art, the who? is answered with a PORTRAIT of a person. The what? is answered with a thing or group of things in a STILL LIFE, and the where? is answered with a LANDSCAPE (cityscape, seascape, or cloudscape). Again, the theme is the idea behind the subject. Joseph Albers painted Squares as his subject, but his art was really about how color shifts depending on it's relationship to others.
Then we discussed the difference.between 2D shapes and 3D forms. Because my students are legally blind, I had them handle plastic models of spheres, hemispheres, cubes, cones, cylinders, rectangular prisms, hexoginal prisms, octagonal prisms, pyramids, dodecahedrons and more. After a couple days of reviewing the names, students could identify each form by name. I also had them feel rubber stamp versions of the forms and a chart of form drawings made tactile through puffy paint. There's a huge difference between a real thing and a 2D version of it.
These geometric forms are the building blocks for almost any subject: portraits, landscapes, or still life objects. I love applying other disciplines to Art class.
By the second day of class we were ready to start drawing. Creating a page of 20-25 circles and a page of elipses is far more useful than you'd expect. Students are used to drawing from their wrist, not from their shoulder, but by moving your whole arm loosely and smoothly, repeating the shape you get better line quality and shape. And elipse should be symmetrical weather it's cut in half horizontally or vertically.
Cylinder: Once the eclipse is mastered, I had students drawn two elipses on top of each other and parallel lines connecting them to make a cylinder. This can also be done by starting with a rectangle, and then drawing the elipses centered on the short ends like lines of symmetry.
Cone: An horizontal elipse with a line cutting it half drawing a vertical line and that centerline can extend up has tall as you want to make your cone. Then draw lines from the top of the line down to the right and left edges of the elipse.
Hemisphere: By now drawing elispes should be getting easier. A horizontal elpise, with circle/ half a circle arching the elipse is all you need to make a snow globe. if the half a circle goes underneiht the elipse like a smile instead of a frown, you got a bowl.
After twenty minutes of elipses turned forms I had a student turning hemispheres into bowls of soup and cauldrons with handles and tripods. She said, "Now I can draw ANYTHING!"
Day 2 of drawing was nothing but cubes, rectilinear prisms, triangular prisms and pyramids. Drawing from the shoulder is especially important with straight lines, since working from the wrist will make the lines curved.
I taught cube by starting with a square with parallel three lines going up from corners, away from the square, at the same angle, and then drawing a horizontal line to connect the top two line segments and a vertical line to finish off the 3rd side of the cube. You end up with three vertical, three horizontal, and three diagonal sets of lines.
A pyramid is made by making a wide angle facing up like an alligator mouth that is open and waiting for something to fall into it. A tall pointy top closes off what looks like an upsidedown diamond shape. Then draw a line from the top point of the diamond to the bottom and you've got a pyramid.
I wish I had learned how to draw these forms and use them to make more complicated in middle school, high school, or even my college art classes.
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