Everyday Matters High School Art Assignment

My students are currently wrapping up a project inspired by Danny Gregory's book and drawing group "Everyday Matters." This is very near and dear to my heart. During my maternity leave, I stumbled on this group and an amazing support system of sketchbook artists. 

In keeping with the limitation theme for my sketchbook assignments, students had to select one of the weekly Everyday Matters Challenges from the list. This became preparation for their project, where they would focus on elevating an everyday item or routine. 

Sketchbook Limitations

This year for sketchbooks I am placing a limitation on the weekly sketchbook homework. Here is a list with links to each of the limitations:

Data Portrait

Continuous line

Art Prompts

Contemporary Artists

Time

Timed sketchbook drawings

 This week in our sketchbook students worked with the limitation of time. They were instructed to pick one item to draw six times in this order:

 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes and 30 seconds

Here are a few examples of what they completed

Drawing Inspiration From Contemporary Artists

 

This week, our limitation was to draw three thumbnail sketches that were inspired by a contemporary artist. I asked students to push beyond what they new and try to find an artist they don't think anyone in the class would have heard of. I asked them to take a day or two to think about it, and before they began, asked them to share the name of their artist to our class padlet. If their artist was already listed, they would need to start over.

I started the posting with Bisa Butler, who is a new favorite of mine.  They tried to check in asking if they could do this type of artist, or a kid their age with an instagram and I stuck with my single answer "Pick a living artist" and it truly paid off.

 I didn't want them picking something to please me. Here are some of the artists they shared:Yoshitomo Nara, Steven McCracken, Donny the Dybbuk, Morgen Kilbourn, OtakuNailArt, Damien Hirst, Victoria Vincent. I love that there are a range of artists including nail art, comic and cartoonists, street art, etsy shop owners and more. 

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Each week I've been giving a limitation for students to work in their sketchbook. Last week it was to use the artprompts generator. To see the rest of the sketches in this series, click the limitation tag at the bottom of this post.

Art Prompts

This year, student have been given a limitation to follow each week for their sketchbook assignment. Last week they drew with continuous line, inspired by a video from Princess Etch. The original post can be read here. What they don't know is that I'm also trying to limit myself by not giving what I consider the same type of prompt over and over again. 

For the latest sketchbook, we chose the prompts together as a class. During our weekly remote day of instruction (hey - future me....remember teaching during a pandemic?) I pulled up the website artprompts.org and for each student chose a category and we generated a prompt on the spot. The list of prompts was posted as a class "bank" of prompts. Students were able to draw any of the prompts that we created together, they didn't have to draw their own.

While I normally dread grading sketchbooks, these unconventional prompts have made it fun. Here's a sample of the prompt "An old tobacco pipe with designs carved on it."

And here is one for "An Alchemist's Lab"

Etch A Sketchbook

A few weeks ago, I shared that we are embracing the theme of limitations in our sketchbooks. Students started with a data portrait inspired by Giorgia Lupi. Original post here. 

Sketchbooks are worth roughly 20% of a project grade, and my expectation is they spend 1 hour per week minimum on their sketchbooks. My criteria for grading is continuous improvement over time. This week's topic was continuous line drawing. I shared a video of Princess Etch the etch-a-sketch artist. Students had to sit somewhere at home and draw any scene they like with a continuous line. As you can see, they are rising to the challenge. 

Limitations

This year we started by watching the video "Embrace the Shake" which lead to a discussion about limitations. We talked about how limitations can help artists and the fear of the blank page. We looked at the work of Giorgia Lupi including the data portraits and they each had to contribute one create one prompt. 

I collected and compiled all the prompts into a document which I shared back with them and students used the prompts to create a data portrait as their first sketchbook assignment. This was a fun ice breaker for the beginning of the year. Some of them stayed abstract while others strove to make pictures and illustrations. Here are a few of their sketchbooks.

As the year continues we are building on the theme of limitations. Each weekly sketchbook has at least one limitation that I place on them, and they are encouraged to add their own limitations as well.