Studio Project #4

For this weeks studio project, we created a 3rd grade project pertaining to how words can be used to create an illustration or in our case, a visual character. This actual relate to many of the English reading standards for Ohio, because students are required to comprehend/explain how illustrations contribute and further influence the words in a text. 

For this particular project, we thought of numerous adjectives as to what we wanted our character to look like to portray a specific emotion. We wrote all of these down on a separate sheet of paper, then began sketching with pencil what we had envisioned. Then, we took a translucent laminate sheet  and placed it over our sketch. We colored in our character with all different colors of markers in attempt to make the character even more realistic. After this, another, thicker sheet of paper (which was sprayed with water to dampen it) was placed under the translucent sheet and the two were pressed together. The marker was then transferred to the thick, white piece of paper and a new creation of art was made from one plain penciled sketch!

My adjectives: 
Age: 25
Gender: woman
Emotion: stressed
Hair color: purple
Hair style: short/straight/smooth
Eye color: blue
Eye type: short/round
Facial type: defined
Ears: small/pierced
Lips: slumped

This project was extremely appropriate for a third grade project, because from my personal perspective, this integrated arts activity would be great to show students how words as well as thoughts can be represented visually. This would pair along lovely with the reading standards and actually further text comprehension, because once the students understand the relationship and correlation between words and illustrations, they'll be better able to look for it as well as comprehend it while reading. Or, even create visuals in their mind while reading, which also contributes to those reading attributes and skills of higher order thinking. 

As far as potential difficultly for students while doing this project, I could see several areas that would pose a challenge to the children. First of all, the translucent paper is obviously extremely easy to smudge, and therefore I think students (who rest their arms on everything, especially while controlling the markers) might have trouble coloring on this type of paper because of the lack of tuned fine motor skills developed at this particular age. Another area of difficulty I could foresee would be when the translucent paper is transferred. If the paper is too wet, or isn't evenly spread throughout the piece of thicker paper, then the marker won't transfer over correctly, which will make everything smear together. This leaves the student with one big messy project. This happened to several people my age in our class, so I can only imagine how many children it would happen too. Other than that, I thought it was a really fun, creative project that the kiddos would thoroughly enjoy. 

Art Standards:
1.1.1., 1.1.2. Elements: line and shape

Common Core:
3.SL.1.d. Explain their own ideas and understanding in light of the discussion
3.W.3.b. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective techniques, descriptive details, and clear event sequences 
3.L.5.b. Identify real-life connections between words and their use 

ELA Standards:
RL.3.7. Explain how specific aspects of a text illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story
RI.3.7. Use information gained from illustrations and words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text