Workshop 7: The Scream

For this week’s community time, the students were tie-dying their UAY shirts. It was a messy process, but everyone seemed to have a lot of fun doing that. One thing that I wish we, the instructors would’ve thought out better, was making absolutely, 100% sure that each student had their name somewhere on their shirt—not on a piece of paper taped to the shirt—not on the tub they put their shirt in—on their shirt. There were only three shirts that had no names, but in the end it felt like a lot more when the student’s wanted to know whose was who. Hopefully we can figure that out without any disgruntled students. 

One girl, who we know should claim one of the nameless shirts was adamant that none of them could possibly be hers because the colors weren’t right. She didn’t seem to take it to heart when we told her that the colors would bleed and mix and turn out differently than she expected. 

Amanda taught this week’s lesson. She was using Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” as her art history reference. Munch made many different versions of this painting. Amanda instructed the student’s that they would be designing a sketch and then making four different versions of it. From what I could tell, each version needed to be made with a different medium; chalk pastel, oil pastel, colored pencil, and paint. 

I was highly interested in following Maggie’s lesson this week as well, so I bounced back and forth between the two. 

If someone had told me last week that Amanda would task the girls with creating not one, but *four* different drawings/paintings in a single session, I would’ve had my doubts about that getting accomplished. But to my astonishment, the students were more on-task than I’ve ever seen them (all at once) and did a great job, each one completing all four pieces requested. 

Three students chose subjects that were animal/anthropomorphic while three choose traditional self-portrait drawings and one chose to focus in on eyes. All the faces/eyes were sad. I did ask about that (to the group—not singling anyone out) and they just kind of laughed. Hopefully just teenage angst. 

Maggie was having her students watercolor paint with dye derived from cabbage leaves! It was intriguing how she achieved different colors with the same dye by which vehicle she put in the dye/water (baking soda, lemon juice, vinegar). Her kids seemed to be having fun with the different watercolor techniques (resist, salt, etc.)

 

Maybe it was the weather, but this seemed like a really good day at the school of the arts. Aside from the unidentified shirts, of course.