Compositions- Square Circle/Portraits

Post date: Oct 3, 2014 2:10:37 PM

For this assignment, students made thumbnail sketches that evoked a particular adjective/idea. Each adjective was fairly simple, and students could only use squares or circles to try and communicate it. It's an assignment I've done numerous times but really isn't one I've been able to push hard because of the relatively steep learning curve in conceptual and abstract thinking. Most all of my students chose the square circle assignment over the portraits because they felt they couldn't draw the portraits. Now I'm thinking that I'll have to change how that assignment's set up so that there's more structure and less apprehension towards the failure and trial and error process of the assignment. They should latch onto it if I put less stress on the portrait aspect and more stress on the composition and expressive qualities of the project. Here's a couple of good examples of student's final compositions. And this is by far not representative of the numerous thumbnails they did, I was pleasantly surprised at the range of solutions my students created while grading these packets. There were clever solutions all over for words/adjectives that I've seen next to no innovation or variation in my three years of teaching this project.