Art education is critical in today's schools. It has been since the times of the ancient Greeks, and only lost its luster during the Industrial Revolution when products became more important and as people became more consumer-driven, turning many schools into education, for profit, "factories."

We however know that art education is not hand turkeys, and frill. When we grid, measure, and draw—we use geometry. When we make sculptures—we use engineering. When we mix colors—we reveal information about physics. When we create illustrations for stories—we learn about literature. When we review the styles of art from da Vinci to Bansky—we teach history. When we write about art—we strengthen these skills. When we create works of art, we solve complex visual problems in creative ways.

This info-graphic attempts to dissect why and what it is we do, and maybe where your own class is.

Red is "Media and Technique." Alone this category would represent house paint and a good brush stroke, rope and trying up items on a boat properly, utilitarian ceramic works, or a well made wood stool.

Blue is about math, science, history, literature, writing, cultures, etc., which every art project generally has some connection to. (Color mixing = physics, story illustrations = literature, tessellations = geometry)

Yellow is the individual being considered in the process, the potential for personal connection, internalization of the information, media, and technique.

Purple are formula projects, "make and take," with little, if any personal expression. Hallways are lined with the work, one looking essentially like the next. It is also the realm of craft that helps to define/express a culture, or decorative items for holidays and special occasions.

Orange is the artful program with lots of expression but fewer connections to core content. It's "art for art's sake," like an open studio, like an island in the school with little connection to anything else. It is also how most professional artists work, so many teachers see this as a model to follow to create little Rembrandts. Both orange and purple have their advantages, and many art classes operate out of these realms.

Green is where a good core content class helps students understand content by personalizing it. This might be with questions like, "What percentage of your body is made up of water, and what weight would that represent?" Or "If you were Bilbo Baggins, in The Hobbit, when would you choose to reveal you had found a magic ring, and why?" Or "Compose a poem to take the place of The Jabberwocky in Through the Looking Glass." It's internalization of class content for deeper understanding.

The middle section is what I strive for, and when I do, I see some amazing things happen. Students make connections between content areas, explore them with more depth and understanding, and create more meaningful, insightful works of art. This is the Heart of a great art program, but certainly a difficult balancing act. One needs to take the time to plan both the personal connection and the relevant core content information.

Three examples through a pinch pot.

Purple Mode: Teacher shows students an inverted pinch pot turtle, glazed green, with little appendages coming out from the bottom. The example is what they will create step by step, pinch a bowl, add the bits, color it green. All students know, "the good ones" look most like the teacher's sample. Parent's love them, so cute!

Orange Mode: Students are given clay and taught how to pinch a pot, then asked to "turn it into something creative" that speaks to their personality. Books or images of other pinch creations may be available to flood students with ideas. Some are stumped with too much choice, but most do well and have fun creating their personal expressive artworks.

Central Mode: Students do a bit of writing about who they are, maybe a list of 10 words to describe themselves. (WRITING) Then they connect each word to a possible animal they think best represents that word. (INTERPRETATION) They create a sketch of that animal to scale. (PLANNING) They learn about Oaxacan carved animals, Haniwa animals, or some other culturally or historically connected touchstone as a reference. (HISTORY) Sketches are redrawn before learning how to properly pinch their sculpture. They cut and weight lumps of clay to get 1/4 pound (MATH) and create their work. The project concludes with a critique, and a few written lines about what they did best, worst, and what they could improve if they did it again. (More Writing)

Time may be your enemy if classes are short, but one core skill can be added to a project to get it into that central mode, be that a little writing, measuring, or historic content.

Studies show that students who take for years of art in high school score 100 points higher on their SATs than their peers. That's awesome, but in 2013 my own students scored 155 points higher on average. I credit that to my integrated approach. Those kinds of numbers, if shared with your administration, can save your program, save your budget, and get you the respect you deserve.

One can and many do have their students create cookie-cutter, candy factory projects (and exercises) like those arty party workshops where they serve wine. Most are happy with the results. The teacher, and students have something to "show" for their work. It's comfortable, there is a feeling of closure and completeness, and most parents, students, colleagues, and administers feel "You're doing an awesome job."

It's like going to a lavish buffet and eating pizza, chicken nuggets, with a cookie to top is off. You'll be full, you'll be happy, and you'll have never challenged yourself to go beyond your comfort zone, which is... comforting.

You'll never know what chicken tikka masala is like, or souvlaki, sushi, vichyssoise, shawarma, or the melt in the mouth joy of fresh crème brûlée. You'll never need to use a fork, knife, spoon, or set of chopsticks. You won't care either because you have let yourself stay inside that comfortable ticky tacky little box.

Art is THE most important class a child can have. Even if they want to be a lawyer, accountant, senator, custodian, chef, etc... The most successful people in every field are the ones who can solve problems in creative ways, finding new and innovative answers. The ones who can integrate math, science, history, language, and the other disciplines into their thought process succeed. ART has done this since the times of Ancient Greek schools. It is only since the industrial revolution that the focus on product, as opposed to process, became a goal, dumbing down art to what happens in so many rooms.

Students will learn linear thinking in other classrooms.
2+2=4
H+2O=Water 
In 1492 Columbus discovered something important
"Casa" means house in Spanish, and Umbrella in Japanese

There is a right and a wrong answer.

But no formula, no class, no guru can show you the right way to paint YOUR dreams, express your soul, your pain, your point of view... but we CAN do it EVERY day in art... if we would just let go of the Ticky Tacky mindset.

Personally, I hate color wheels and I dislike shading cones. I abhor the idea that an "exercise" can take the place of even one minute of art making in my classroom. I will never subject my students to it. 

Let me explain...

With a color wheel on the wall, why must my students make one? I can give them primary colors, and with ANY project I choose, force them to mix to learn how to make their colors WHILE making a work of art. I suppose on a test, a mini color wheel can be made to be assessed, but I digress.

I can have a poster with shaded forms, but when we draw objects I have my students shade right on their sketches and projects. I don't have them draw "my still-life," they either make one, or bring in objects that "speak" to who they are.

We sketch, we plan, we write, and we do. I see no value to doing any project where 2 kids, or worse, a whole class has the same outcome in an art room. If names must be on work so the kid who made it knows which one is theirs... I see that as an indication of failure on my part...I know we need names on work so we can grade it - but a kid should not have to see their name to know it's theirs!

...And this is my k-12 approach, and always has been for 25 years...

What am I missing? What don't I get? Why do some projects look like they came off a Wonka assembly line?

Any project can be designed to focus on a specific skill without resorting to the cookie-cutter or exercises. Here's one example (see image below). Before painting I often have students learn to blend, and we use oil pastels as an intro or transition media. I pair it with the spectrum too. So the background is the "skill-based" item with blending and ROY G. Biv, the foreground silhouette includes 1 or 3 natural elements (From a photo resource or observation), and a figure or two that represents the student doing something that illustrates who they are as a person, in this case, a kid that loves astronomy.

Yes, everyone will have a similar background, but each one will have a unique and personal foreground. The natural element is supposed to be expressive. Sad tree, little bonsai, scary, or maybe just a bush... then the figure is doing something the student feels speaks to who they are or what they enjoy, adding that personal/personality element.

Even in a TAB setting, kids can choose a project they want, just require that somewhere they blend the spectrum. OR have a check list and check off that skill when a child shows it to you at some point during the year...

I am not even remotely suggesting that one skips fundamentals and allow students to sink or swim in the classroom. This does not have to be an all or nothing experience where "artsy" students do well, and those with little experience "sink." I fully understand that what I suggest is different than what many people do, and different is scary, and often rebuked out of hand. 

My experience, from Kinder through 12th grade, over 25 years, big and small classes, is that kids CAN LEARN fundamentals without having to do cookie cutter exercises or projects EVER. I will admit, it takes a tad more forethought, a bit more planning, but both the students and yourself will be richer for the experience. There will be more on-task art-making, and less time "wasted" on non-art making.

If you want to start small, that's fine. Give them cakes of Yellow and Blue. Do ANY PROJECT you want. Paint a dream they had this past week, paint a garden you'd like to play hide and seek in, paint the monster under your bed, or the mythological creature that will protect you from your fears... and I swear, those kids will learn in short order that when blue and yellow touch, a magical green appears, and you won't have wasted ANYONE'S time with an insipid color wheels or shading cones that can be posted on the wall ever again.

They will have expressed their personal dreams, fears, wishes, etc. EVERY project will look different. EVERY project will have a story, EVERY project will be an honest and real work of art...

And every child will know yellow and blue makes GREEN.

I have noticed more and more variations on pixel art being covered by media, blogs, youtube, and more; Thumbtacks, Skittles, Mentos, Dominoes, Coffee, etc... it's starting to feel like a gimmick to me, (Ohhh what can I convert into pixels next.) I can see where the "process" of making a believable image via a non-traditional material can be fun for kids... (nothing wrong with fun!)

I feel a bit uneasy about critics hailing it as "Great Art" when to me, I see it as a machine-like process of reproducing an image. It's starting to feel like a skill-based craft, similar to reproducing a nice chair, and rings "hollow" in expression. What is that artist's connection to van Gogh that inspired him to make a reproduction of "Starry Night"? Why Lego's? What does the material say about the work, and what does the work say about the man that made it... I would guess... nothing.

If the artist conceives of and creates an expressive work of art via the "pixel process," I see it as justifiable, but sometimes lacking depth... much in the way I judge Kostabi, Koons, or other non-artist-"artists." (Grabbing attention but lacking depth.) It's like the "WOW" factor is more important than the art itself.

One might say, "Well what about Chuck Close?" I have seen a retrospective of his work and he did do a lot of pixel-style work, even more pixelated than the grid portraits most people know about. (Example above is a Chuck Close Ink Stamp Drawing) I saw others done with thumbprints, blobs of paper paste, etc. But he broke down a photo without the use of a computer to tell him what tone to represent in a certain grid square. 

Much of the contemporary examples though are "popped" in a computer, photo-shopped, printed out, and followed like directions for latch-hook. When you think of a drip painting , Pollock can do it 'cause he came up with it, but others who do lose out on originality. Consider Rothko's color field work, and the many who came after adding little to the genre.

Academically there is some value: color mixing, color theory in practice, and an exercise in non-traditional media that has some "wow" factor. One may argue too that it's an extension of Neo-Dada, the Pop Art of the new millennium. 

I think though, without a thoughtful connection of media to message however, it's a craft item, not far removed from latch-hook or paint by numbers, and maybe that's what critics said about Warhol in the 60's.

One may argue that grid drawn portraits are the same but I'd argue the method is one we can trace back to the Renaissance, and it has been used through today by many artists in high regard.  There is ample evidence that artists of the renaissance, had used a camera obscura to create images. We know some artists of that time used wire grids stretched on frames set between the subject and the artist.  Though they may not have had printed photos, they certainly had close parallels. 

I am not willing to toss grid drawing just yet. Though gridding is a form of reproducing an image, it must be done by hand, and the student is still in a matter, drawing from observation, though it an observation of a printed resource. Instead of doing one large complicated drawing, students create 50 or so smaller, simpler drawings.

Students are still thinking through the process, still learning to observe carefully. I try to make grid projects more "valid" by requiring students bring in images of a family member, or we take digital photos of each other, sometimes in costume, so it is "like" a commissioned work an artist of almost any time period would do.

I have not yet done a pixel-based project with my students. I just have not yet found a way to add some "meat" to the pixel "bones." If one can tie the material to the message, and further connect it to the artist making it, I could see it being more "artful." Off the top of my head, a "hunger" based theme, created with food... or an obesity these paired with candy, Homelessness images created with coins... or to make that the "point" of the project--to illustrate with pixels an image that somehow related to the pixel material... That is the only way I can wrap my head around it and justify it, it's just difficult to remain connected to the student/artist.

A common resource for art is the book, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." It's full of some really great skill building exercises for artists young and old but backs up it's approach with the theory that the right side of the brain is more creative, and the left is more logical.

This myth has been debunked through a massive study of 1000 brains by Plos One with more articles HERE and HERE. So if the foundation of Betty Edwards' book is false, does that mean one should throw it away?

Hardly. Many of the exercises are very helpful in teaching student to truly "see" what they are drawing as opposed to drawing what they think they know. Though I don't teach from the book, I still use several of the techniques, like drawing upside-down when my students do grid portraits. It slows them down and their work looks better. Others love the negative space drawings, or the line drawing approaches. Betty Edwards offers a lot of tools to add to your toolbox. 

My main point is that if we continue to talk about it in terms of left and right brain, we sound a bit like "flat earthers." When advocating for the arts within our schools and community, it's important to avoid coming across as ill-informed. Creativity and cognition are spread throughout the brain and is far more complex than left and right.

​Keep the tools, lose the hyperbole.