By the end of this course sequence, students will prioritize art products in order to choose artwork for a portfolio that can be used to apply for arts programs in high school as well as employment.

Course Description

This course will allow students to develop basic artistic skills to increase their confidence in expressing themselves through drawing, painting, sculpture. Several ‘mini lessons’ will help students to overcome some common pitfalls in trying to draw from observation. We will also experiment with color themes through watercolors and form through clay sculptures. Introduction with the Elements of Art will improve students’ capacity to describe and reflect upon art.

This course is nine weeks in length.

Academic Standards

Art Standards

• Creating: Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work. Combine concepts collaboratively to generate artistic ideas.
• Creating:  Refine and complete artistic work. Reflect on whether personal artwork conveys the intended meaning and revise.
• Presenting: Select, analyze and interpret. Analyze similarities and differences associated with presenting 2-D and 3-D artwork. 
• Responding: Analyze artistic work. Analyze how visual components and cultural associations influence ideas.
• Connecting: Relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art. Generate a collection of current interests to inspire art.

Approaches to Learning Skills

Thinking Skills

• Gather and organize relevant information to formulate an argument
• Recognize unstated assumptions and bias
• Evaluate evidence and arguments
• Draw reasonable conclusions and generalizations
• Propose and evaluate a variety of solutions

Social Skills

• Practice empathy
• Delegate and share responsibility for decision making
• Manage and resolve conflict and work collaboratively
• Negotiate effectively
• Encourage others to contribute

Communication Skills

• Give/receive feedback
• Use appropriate forms of writing for various purposes and audiences
• Interpret and use modes of non-verbal communication
• Negotiate ideas and knowledge with peers and teachers
• Organize and depict information logically

Self-Management Skills

• Plan short and long term assignments; meet deadlines
• Set goals that are challenging and realistic
• Bring necessary supplies to class
• Practice bouncing back after adversity, mistakes and failures
• Develop new skills, techniques for effective learning

Research Skills

• Access info to be informed and inform others
• Make connections between various sources of information
• Seek a range of perspectives from multiple and varied sources
• Use critical literacy skills to analyze and interpret media communications
• Present information in a variety of formats and platforms

Course Description

This course will focus on drawing skills with the development of line-weight and value to convey form and space. They are challenged to express specific ideas of personal interest through art-making and to evaluate their products through the vocabulary of art media, purposes and the Principles of Design.

This course is 18 weeks in length.

Academic Standards

Visual Art

• Creating: Apply methods to overcome creative blocks.
• Creating: Demonstrate persistence in developing skills with various materials, methods and approaches to creating art.
• Presenting: Based on criteria analyze and evaluate methods for preparing art.
• Responding: Compare and explain the difference between evaluating art based on personal and established criteria.
• Connecting: Analyze the influence of time and place in our response to artwork

Approaches to Learning Skills

Thinking Skills

• Gather and organize relevant information to formulate an argument
• Recognize unstated assumptions and bias
• Evaluate evidence and arguments
• Draw reasonable conclusions and generalizations
• Propose and evaluate a variety of solutions

Social Skills

• Practice empathy
• Delegate and share responsibility for decision making
• Manage and resolve conflict and work collaboratively
• Negotiate effectively
• Encourage others to contribute

Communication Skills

• Give/receive feedback
• Use appropriate forms of writing for various purposes and audiences
• Interpret and use modes of non-verbal communication
• Negotiate ideas and knowledge with peers and teachers
• Organize and depict information logically

Self-Management Skills

• Plan short and long term assignments; meet deadlines
• Set goals that are challenging and realistic
• Bring necessary supplies to class
• Practice bouncing back after adversity, mistakes and failures
• Develop new skills, techniques for effective learning

Research Skills

• Access info to be informed and inform others
• Make connections between various sources of information
• Seek a range of perspectives from multiple and varied sources
• Use critical literacy skills to analyze and interpret media communications
• Present information in a variety of formats and platforms

Course Descriptions

Drawing skills will be brought to bear on the making of a self-portrait, focusing on the use of line-weight and value to transform flat shapes into form and space. Painting skills will explore the making of space through the layering and blending of acrylic paint. Sculptures in clay will utilize slab-building techniques to create volumes with space inside them. Students will also focus on one artist to research and evaluate in relationship to time and place as well as analytical concepts in visual art.

This course is 18-weeks in length.

Academic Standards

Visual Arts

• Creating: Demonstrate willingness to experiment, innovate and take risks to pursue ideas, forms and meanings.
• Creating: Apply relevant criteria, reflect on, and plan revisions for a work of art in progress.
• Presenting: Develop and apply criteria for evaluating a collection of artwork for presentation.
• Responding: Create a convincing and logical argument to support and evaluation of art.
• Connection: Make art collaboratively to reflect on and reinforce positive aspects of group identity.

Approaches to Learning Skills

Thinking Skills

• Gather and organize relevant information to formulate an argument
• Recognize unstated assumptions and bias
• Evaluate evidence and arguments
• Draw reasonable conclusions and generalizations
• Propose and evaluate a variety of solutions

Social Skills

• Practice empathy
• Delegate and share responsibility for decision making
• Manage and resolve conflict and work collaboratively
• Negotiate effectively
• Encourage others to contribute

Communication Skills

• Give/receive feedback
• Use appropriate forms of writing for various purposes and audiences
• Interpret and use modes of non-verbal communication
• Negotiate ideas and knowledge with peers and teachers
• Organize and depict information logically

Self-Management Skills

• Plan short and long term assignments; meet deadlines
• Set goals that are challenging and realistic
• Bring necessary supplies to class
• Practice bouncing back after adversity, mistakes and failures
• Develop new skills, techniques for effective learning

Research Skills

• Access info to be informed and inform others
• Make connections between various sources of information
• Seek a range of perspectives from multiple and varied sources
• Use critical literacy skills to analyze and interpret media communications
• Present information in a variety of formats and platforms

• Bryan Station High School StationArts Program
• Frederick Douglass High School Arts @ Douglass Program
• School for Creative and Performing Arts
• All high schools offer various levels of visual arts courses

• Art club
• Drama club
• Yearbook