KATIE KUTZ
Artist/ Student/ Art Educator
CLASS FOUR: MASKS
Project Description
Four our fourth lesson we continued to build on the skills from previous lessons including forming, shaping and paper mache techniques through the creation of ornamental masks. These masks were a chance to reveal aspects of students personality through art making, whether that be through form or color. These masks will have string attached and ready to be worn in our next class.
Essential Understandings
The essential understandings for this project are for students to implement the problem solving skills they have acquired through forming, shaping and using paper mache to now form and shape using plaster gauze which are easier to use. This facilitates the creating of more complex ornamentation.
Intended Outcomes
-Students will continue to develop their ideas through sketching
-Students will continue to work on their 3D building skills through this projects
-Students will develop their design ideas through these masks
-Students will expand on their creativity through this project
-Students will learn to build off a an already 3D item to make it their own
Skills
Learning how to use plaster gauze
How to shape and form with different materials to add elements to the mask form
Techniques of painting on new material of plaster gauze
Designing 3D forms through sketching nad practice with materials
Problem Solving
REFLECTION
The one thing that I think worked well for this lesson was that we had two things to accomplish, the first was to make our masks and the second was to paint out balloons from the previous lesson. Originally we were going to have them paint their balloons first so we could finish up with that project entirely before starting the next, however we decided to switch that order partially because it was really important for them to get their masks completely made because they take awhile to dry and because if they didn’t finish then they would not be able to paint them next week. We also decided to switch the order because we though that it may be difficult and/or chaotic to try to teach the next lesson as everyone was finishing their paintings as different times. Also, another thing that went well was that we had this lesson a lot more prepared than previous ones. For instance, we had the masks already to go with foil on them and the strips were already precut, and we had also cut and taken out the balloons from their previous project, so they were ready to be painted right away. This allowed for more time to create and allowed for less confusion as in previous projects. The last thing that went well this time was that I got a chance to finally teach a bit. I explained the masks how I made mine and utilized my example for the first time and did a really quick demo on how to use the plaster strips. I even got to talk to them about how to form and shape extra components that they may have wanted to add. All in all, I think that this lesson was our best yet.
The one thing that did not go as expected, it wasn’t necessarily bad, but they finished their masks way faster than we had anticipated. They finished them in about 30 minutes. I think this came from using the plaster gauze instead of the paper Mache. It was a lot easier to use and because of all the prep work that we did they were able to get right to their masks. It wasn’t an awful thing that they finished those quickly as students spent a lot of time painting their balloons and seemed to need that time. Only two students finished their painting about 15 minutes before cleanup time, the rest had finished shortly after them. I was worried because we didn’t have anything else for them to do exactly, they could have painted something else or made another mask, but they were uninterested in that. However, we had a good class where we were all talking with each other and those two students were happy to just talk for a moment. One of them I believe did end up painting something else, the other was happy just talking. So that is the only thing that could have gone a bit better.
Something that I would do differently would be to have an extra thing that students who finished the first two things early would be able to do, or we could have spent little more time with a demo, also we only had two examples this time so perhaps if we had three more we would have spent more time talking about those. I think that we just needed something else to fill just a little bit of time. Or perhaps we could have had them cut their own strips.