Teaching Baroque painting techniques through chiaroscuro and artistic interpretation

¶ … Teaching Video

Lesson

In the video I am showing how to paint like a Baroque artist, teaching the students the art of chiaroscuro, dynamism, impasto, and sprezzato. This would be lesson plan no. 5 and incorporates various aspects of the art technique.

Promoting a Positive Learning Environment

Demonstrating Respect, Rapport, and Responsiveness

I demonstrated respect for students with varied needs and backgrounds by taking time to ask them each whether they saw how the four different methods of painting helped to produce the desired effects. This allowed them to show that they could see the effects of light and shadow, movement, thickness, and quickness. We developed rapport by talking about other techniques that could be used and the students each contributed by suggesting a technique, such as blotting, dotting, etc. that could add something to the style. I demonstrated responsiveness by locating those techniques in other art movements, such as pop/modern and abstract, etc., and the students saw how techniques of painting helped to establish new directions in art and new movements that went away from the Baroque/Mannerist style. I encouraged them to examine and compare two styles from two different eras, say Baroque and Modern (Velasquez and Picasso) to see how different they were and I asked them why this might be so -- what had happened in culture and the world to give these artists such different approaches to creating art and reflecting reality in the way that they did. We did this at the beginning of class before starting on practicing their own brush strokes in the style of a Baroque painter.

3. Engaging Students in Learning

a. Creating Meaning through Interpretation

My instruction engaged students to create meaning through interpreting art by showing them why an artist like Honthorst would use light to focus attention on a specific individual, such as the Matchmaker. Then I asked the students why this was done, and they interpreted the meaning of this use of light, suggesting that the Matchmaker is the subject or that the light shifts the narrative from one side of the picture to another. The students each had to say one way of interpreting this image.

When it came time to practice developing Baroque works of art, the students were encouraged to create a concept first. This means they had to think about the subject they wanted to paint. It could come from their personal lives or their life at school. The main thing was to have a subject, a story, and then to tell that story by painting an image. We discussed how stories in paintings do not have to be long like a book. They can simply be an idea -- something like Mr. X is A, B, and C, shown by how he is painted. This got them thinking about who or what they would like to paint. The main focus was to choose an idea that was meaningful for them. So for some, who had religious families, they wanted to do a religious picture. For others, sports and movies were important to them, so they wanted to paint a picture of a sports hero standing with his baseball bat or his football, because this gear identified them, just like a sword and horse would identify a Baroque person. The movie star was given the similar treatment, so in this way, modern examples of important things were used as the subject for Baroque treatment and the students were more engaged in the process of painting as a result.

b. Linking Students' Prior Learning with New Learning

This instruction linked students' prior academic knowledge with new knowledge in that they already had an understanding of the Baroque era and how art represented major ideas from the time, such as nobility, redemption, social interaction, etc., and now they could see how those ideas were generated in painting in a hands-on approach. Their personal knowledge was also linked in that they already understood what was important to them and now they could express that importance in an artistic way by using Baroque expression to locate the noble ideas within that which they valued. This taught them to see why they valued what they did. In a cultural way, this link was made by showing how though cultures and times change, some things stay the same and their knowledge of European history was connected to new knowledge of modern times when I showed them each how the subject they chose could be traced back to the Baroque era through historical channels. Their knowledge of community was also linked because they already had a sense of how they all belonged to a society and now they could see how groups interlinked through things like school and common interests like sports or movies or religion. We did this at the end of class after the students had taken some time to begin with their painting exercises and this allowed us to wrap up our day with a quick examination of ourselves and how we had connected.

4. Deepening Student Learning during Instruction

b. Providing Students with Choice to Deepen Understanding of Concepts

I provided students with opportunities for student choice in ways that deepened their understanding of visual art concepts/contexts as the students created visual art by allowing them to come up with and develop their own subject and concept for the painting using the methods of expression that we had discussed in class. Thus each student had the personal choice to choose what was special in his or her own life and use that as a starting point for creating their painting. I helped them identify ways of expressing their subject in Baroque terms but only enough to get them going. Once they caught on to the idea, they moved rapidly in the right direction and became very engaged in the process of using the Baroque method to express something that was important to them in their own lives.

5. Analyzing Teaching

a. Changes to Make to Instruction

Changes I would make to my instruction for the whole class would be to expand this lesson over two classes instead of one so that we could take the time to more fully engage with the ideas and concepts that were being explored in the class. The students all raised interesting points that we could discuss at length but time constraints obliged us to push forward.

Thus in a future plan I would design the lesson to allow for more time for discussion so that we could connect ideas to history within the visual arts world, looking both backward and forward in time to see where art might be going from here. It would also be helpful in establishing greater rapport with the students, by allowing them to discuss in depth their own personal tastes in music or sports or religion or politics so that they could learn how to express themselves and why they hold the views and opinions that they hold. Others could also hear about their classmates this way and learn more about them. In this way, it would encourage more connection among the students too as they could see more about each other.

For students who need greater support, I would give them personal assistance and give them support by asking them questions that would be designed to lead them to the right solution for their task. For these needing a greater challenge, I would challenge them to incorporate various themes about their subject into the painting and thus create a richer, more complex work of art that can facilitate even greater discussion.

These changes would help to support student learning of the central focus by taking into account missed opportunities, such as the opportunity to connect more with students as well as for the students to learn more about each other in the class, not through forced examination but just through the execution of the lesson and their engagement with the activity, led by my asking them questions about what is important to them and how would they show that. I would also give the example of what is important to me and what I would paint and how I would paint it in the Baroque manner so as to help them from avoiding embarrassment. If they see that it is okay to talk about what is important then they might be more open to the concept, whereas in this lesson there was some slight reluctance on their part to appear vulnerable by discussing what they valued in their own lives. This would be an opportunity for me to lead them by way of example to share this kind of information.