Art in school

Everyone can do art !

In the art classes that we had with Brigitte, we had the chance to experience different creative ways of doing art. I have to admit that I have always been afraid to create something out of the blue and without any support. For example, drawing always made me afraid because I could never reproduce exactly the same as what I had in mind. But, in this class I got to understand that there were many ways to take this fear away and be able to dare to create and make something with my hands. I really got into the tasks and wanted to learn about these different methods because I know a lot of pupils also feel insecure about doing art because they don't trust in their capacities and tend to compare their skills with others. 

During my internships in my country, I could see how art classes are structured and full of instructions. This is why, when I teach art, the pupils come to me and ask what they have to do, or if what they're doing is right. For me, the methods used in our schools constrain the pupils and brake the pupils' imagination and full potential. During my internship in Denmark I saw the total opposite. Indeed, the teacher gave an art task to the pupils, which they did very indenpendently and with a lot of freedom. This made me understand that it is important, as a teacher, to show the pupils that art can be everything and that they are able to do art in any ways they want to. In subjects such as art, that is can be connected with pupils' emotions, it is important to believe in their capacities and give them confidence to let them flow their imagination and experience the world in another way.

Draw with Øistein Kristiansen

https://www.youtube.com/user/oisteinkristiansen

During one of our classes I made a very interesting discovery. Oistein Kristiansen, a Norwegian artist, that makes videos about amazing drawings that can be done in a creative and easy way. I really got very inspired by him, because I think that as a future teacher I will want to build a creative confidence in every pupil. This artist shows many different ways to take a pen and create fancy cities or landscapes but also animals. One of his videos shows how to create an alternative and fictive city by drawing hills and adding things that don't really make sense but give a global satisfactory result in the end. At the end we even added some puppets to make a living story out of the drawing. The image below tells a story of a green city reproduced in the future to show the people how life looked like in the past. There is a scientist observing how the caterpillar turns into a butterfly to understand how the ecosystem worked in the past. This drawing is a message about our environment's change in the future.

The circle of senses

This artistic creation represents all the senses we use and that are connected when we work in an aesthetic way.

Peter Callesen

Another interesting way to do art with the kids is to use Peter Callesen's paper work method. This artist creates objects out of one piece of paper and what he cuts out of it. During this lesson we had to cut an apple out of the paper and create the rest of that same apple with the paper. This way of working with the pupils can be a nice challenge for them because they only have to use one piece of paper to create something. It also lets them experience new art techniques that are different.

Paper experimentation and the word maze

Our teacher told us to work a paper sheet by putting products on it or rumpling it so that it could be used in class to experience a same material in another way and to create something out of it. Personally, I used olive oil that I poured on my paper and let dry. The next day my paper sheet was soft and almost transparent. Then, we were told to create a figure out of it and I decided to do a little devil with a black cap.