My first step in planning this activity began in the Doucette Library at the U of C where we were shown a variety of resources we had available to us to guide our lesson plans. I loved this experience and immediately started to explore the books and materials they had. I picked out a few picture books and a couple curriculum books for grade six art.
Prior to the Library visit I knew I wanted to incorporate a lesson with a guided meditation as provocation for the final product as well as a drawing and painting integrated activity. In one of the books there was a lesson for painting a tree, and I found a great book on imagination. Now my idea was growing. I decided to use the book on imagination as an opener to introduce the students to opening their frame of mind.
I asked my sisters to spend an afternoon with me painting so that I could try out the activity with them. The overall lesson included reading "Imagine a Night", introducing different painting techniques, teaching colour theory, showing photos of various artistic representations of trees, meditating an image of a tree, sketching thumbnails of the tree and finally painting a final completed composition of a tree. As my sisters were doing the mediation they started to laugh and I realized that it needed to be edited for "conciseness" and to take out all the "cheesy" bits. Overall it was a positive experience. Through this review with my sisters I cut down the meditation and focused more on materials and process of painting.
When I presented my experience for my classmates I was nervous but excited to do some painting. I walked them through the various aspects of the lesson and we got straight to painting. As we were painting many delightful surprises came up. Keely used her sponge in a different way that I had not demonstrated, Vince used exciting colours for his sky and ground, and Chenelle was excited that she could complete a project that was not as serious as her university painting class. As we painted I was sure to give praise for where the paintings took a more abstract approach. Part of this lesson was to emphasize that art can be good, even when its abstract. At this developmental level students are obsessed with realism. I wanted to make this lesson comfortable and successful for every learner. The result of this was with Vince's interpretation of abstract through his border, Keely's confidence in her painting result despite being new to the medium and Chenelle's excitement over being free to be more expressive in her work.
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