Art Lesson Plan: Non-Objective Design from Fine Art

Materials needed: Reproductions, viewfinders with rectangle opening, 9 x 12 white paper, pencils, black markers, water based markers, watercolors, brushes, colored pencils

2. Using a viewfinder, travel around the piece and frame a composition. The composition should be complex with some detailed and some ambiguous areas. Using a 9 x 12 piece of drawing paper, draw a rectangle (in same proportion as viewfinder) that is no larger than half the paper. The rectangle can be placed anywhere on the paper.

4. Draw an enlarged version of the composition in the background. Do not draw through the rectangle. Add to background shapes -making composition more interesting.

5. Establishing lights and darks: Using a black marker create darks, this can be accomplished by filling in areas with textures like cross hatching, hatching, stippling or solid lines. Sections can be outlined and/or lines can be enhanced with thin to thick weighted lines.

6. Color: You may use 4 colors plus black and white. Colors can be analogous (cool and warm), complementary (colors directly across from each other on the color wheel), split complementary, or monochromatic. It is your choice.

7. Begin color in the rectangle. Techniques used can be realistically smooth or they can be textured like the Impressionists. Include shading using a darker analogous color or its complement.

8. When the rectangle is complete, begin work on the background. YOUR GOAL IS THE CREATE THE BACKGROUND AS IF THE RECTANGLE WAS FLOATING ABOVE IT. Think carefully how you will do this. Will it be because of color, shadows, textures, or contrast?

This lesson uses fine art/masterpieces as inspiration - works used are copyrighted (unless they have passed into Public Domain). This lesson will give you an opportunity talk about copyright issues. Let the students decide if this is Fair Use. They are creating a "derived" work - a drawing from a selected area of a painting. Maybe have a debate (Notice that these works are significantly altered - there is little resemblance to the original work). You might also have the students research about the artist and work of art they selected. Have students compare and contrast their finished work to the original painting.

1. Understanding and applying media, techniques, and processes	2. Using knowledge of structures and functions	4. Understanding the visual arts in relation to history and cultures	5. Reflecting upon and assessing the characteristics and merits of their work and the work of others
Students apply media, techniques, and processes with sufficient skill, confidence, and sensitivity that their intentions are carried out in their artworks	Students demonstrate the ability to form and defend judgments about the characteristics and structures to accomplish commercial, personal, communal, or other purposes of art	Students differentiate among a variety of historical and cultural contexts in terms of characteristics and purposes of works of art	Students identify intentions of those creating artworks, explore the implications of various purposes, and justify their analyses of purposes in particular works
Students conceive and create works of visual art that demonstrate an understanding of how the communication of their ideas relates to the media, techniques, and processes they use	Students evaluate the effectiveness of artworks in terms of organizational structures and functions	Students describe the function and explore the meaning of specific art objects within varied cultures, times, and places	Students describe meanings of artworks by analyzing how specific works are created and how they relate to historical and cultural contexts
	Students create artworks that use organizational principles and functions to solve specific visual arts problems	Students analyze relationships of works of art to one another in terms of history, aesthetics, and culture, justifying conclusions made in the analysis and using such conclusions to inform their own art making	(Advanced) Students correlate responses to works of visual art with various techniques for communicating meanings, ideas, attitudes, views, and intentions