Class # 3 - September 24, 2019

Paint to the Music

Today's Lesson

We are going to teach participants to create paintings that are inspired by music. Students will be able to explain how we can express our emotions through a painting using symbols, colors, and images.

Essential Understandings

Students can explain connections between auditory and visual art
Students can explain/discuss their process
- I can explain how I interpret music visually
- I can discuss how art across multiple mediums have similarities
Students can explore how their interpretations manifest on the canvas.

Outcomes

Students will be able to...

Describe how music makes them feel
- What emotions are evoked from each song, why?
- How can we use symbols, colors, and images to depict emotions?
Identify connections between auditory and visual art
Explore paint as a medium to portray other ideas or other forms of art
Explain/discuss their process
- I can explain how the music makes me feel
- I can explain how I portrayed those feelings visually
Use painting as a tool for expressing music. I can use paint to express how a certain song makes me feel.
Investigate connections between visual and auditory art. I can express music as a painting
Process a prompt and respond to it. I can explore a prompt.

Skills

Creative thinking
Flexibility with open-ended prompt

In our third session, the class explored 2-D art making by listening to music and painting whatever comes to mind. Each song, artists would rotate the canvas, thereby filling in the entire canvas. Upon introduction of the project, the students immediately contributed their favorite songs and got down to work. They were fully engaged for the entire two hours. At the end, not one canvas looked similar and each reflected the unique interests and artistic styles of the artists. Check out the paintings that our students made today!

This artist started out class by asking what she should paint and seemed overwhelmed by the options, as she could paint anything. When the first song came on, Let It Go, from Frozen, she painted snowflakes, a very literal translation of what she was hearing. When she first started splattering paint on the canvas, shown in the video, she said "Hey! Look at that!" Eventually it transformed into the second painting, which kept her fixated and imaginative throughout the duration of class. She learned to let go of her inhibition, and paint abstractly. She learned to "let it go" and by doing so learned how to color mix, fill the canvas, and understand how artists create a composition. (Scroll through photos to see process)

This artist explored the layering of paint during this class. He would cover the canvas in a different color for every song that played. This student for the most part is non verbal. Occasionally during class he would talk under is breath "Now yellow" or "and black" or simply "Yellow!" The amount of space that he covered during a song was impressive and he always used the side of the sponge or brush, never the tip. The exploration of color and color theory is something that he is very interested in. (Scroll through photos to see process)

This student also explored during this class through color but by mixing them together on the canvas and in her pallet. Due to the nature of the project switching the orientation of the canvas between each song, this artist was able to naturally fill out her entire canvas. She created little rectangles of different or similar colors during every song. She did so with focus and interest in creating new colors throughout! After talking with her towards the end of the class she was making associations between the colors and other things. For instance she pointed to one of the yellows and exclaimed "Mustard!" (Scroll through photos to see process)

Here are many of the final pieces of artwork. You can see that no one painting is the same. Each artist felt the music in their own way and translated it to create unique pieces of art. Each exploration was unique to the student and transformed throughout the class.