Lesson 1
What's my Nature?
Project Description: Students will explore their own personal surroundings. Settings will include their home environment, urban city location, park, or school. The location is dependent upon where this lesson is taught. In this lesson students will identify what makes up their surroundings.
Discussion Questions:
Activity 1: Discuss what you think nature is. What makes up nature? Activity one is an open discussion between the teacher and students.
Activity 2: Identify what makes up three different settings. Are you at school, home, a park, or a shopping mall? Where are you? The student is to document their surroundings with sketches in their sketch journals, 3 sketches per a location, 9 total. Students will take notes on the color, sounds, feeling and space surrounding them.
Activity 3: From one of the sketches the student will create a final work in any preferred paint medium. The final work should be 9x12. The intended purpose for this assignment is to expose the student to how nature and space are used and studied by the artist.
Artists/Places of interest
BBC. (2009). Religions- Shinto: Shrines. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/shinto/places/shrines_1.shtml.
C.J. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/
Dougherty, P. (2013). Out in front. Retrieved from
http://www.ringling.edu/learn/community-education/community/smoa/patrickdougherty-at-smoa/
Holt, N. (2013). Nancy Hole. Retrieved from http://nancyholt.org/.
Discussion Questions:
- Is it your nature setting urban, countryside, suburban, farmland, in a park, at a school or a shopping mall?
- What types of structures are present?
- Is the setting busy, quiet, slow, fast, calm, creepy, smelly or hectic?
- How does this environment make you feel?
- Is nature incorporated into an urban environment and is so, how?
- How do you think an artist handles space in nature?
Activity 1: Discuss what you think nature is. What makes up nature? Activity one is an open discussion between the teacher and students.
Activity 2: Identify what makes up three different settings. Are you at school, home, a park, or a shopping mall? Where are you? The student is to document their surroundings with sketches in their sketch journals, 3 sketches per a location, 9 total. Students will take notes on the color, sounds, feeling and space surrounding them.
Activity 3: From one of the sketches the student will create a final work in any preferred paint medium. The final work should be 9x12. The intended purpose for this assignment is to expose the student to how nature and space are used and studied by the artist.
Artists/Places of interest
- Christo and Jeanne-Claude
- Nancy Holt
- Patrick Dougherty
- Shinto shrines
BBC. (2009). Religions- Shinto: Shrines. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/shinto/places/shrines_1.shtml.
C.J. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/
Dougherty, P. (2013). Out in front. Retrieved from
http://www.ringling.edu/learn/community-education/community/smoa/patrickdougherty-at-smoa/
Holt, N. (2013). Nancy Hole. Retrieved from http://nancyholt.org/.