Does Persistence Really Lead to Success?
Art teaches a lot of important life skills, and the best description of these skills is in Studio Thinking 2, a book by Hetland and others. Recently, midway in the process of creating a new art lesson based on folk art depictions of the sun, I found a poster that summarizes much of the book, and adds a few new insights as well.
Persistence
One of the life skills that visual art lessons teach, according to Studio Thinking, is PERSISTENCE. The poster uses another word: PERSEVERE. When we hear that art teaches us to persevere, it easily gives the (somewhat false) impression that if you just follow the process to the end, the art project will turn out fine. At least we’d like to think so.
However, experience often proves otherwise, as my work on the sun-as-art project demonstrated. Things don’t always turn out right!
For the lesson, I was aiming for a number of things:
-
It would be based on folk images of the sun
-
It would be a Level I lesson, and
-
It would be about warm and cool colors.
A short search revealed that people really like using images of the sun to decorate. I found clay suns on houses, brilliantly colored suns in a Mexican restaurant, and a metal sun with two kinds of eyes on the back door of a camper/bus. But the most interesting sun for the lesson (or so I thought, was a Haitian steel art sun that arranged the whole sky—sun, moon, and stars—in a circle. What could be more interesting!
I set out to create the lesson, and the further I went with the process, the more difficult the lesson seemed to be. First, the sun, moon, and stars were too close together for a beginning student to draw, so I separated them, pulling the moon away front the sun, and scattering the stars around the picture.
That looked good as a drawing, but I wanted to make this about warm and cool colors, so I thought it would be good to add some circles reminiscent of the original art work. Circles might give students better opportunity to explore the use of warm and cool colors.
As I continued, I kept having the nagging feeling that this project was NOT going to succeed. But we all know the rule: PERSEVERE! And so I did. When I finished, the project seemed too involved for our Level I lessons, and besides, it looked rather boring. It was a picture with no pizzaz. What child would be inspired by it to create their own picture of the sun?
It was time to toss the picture aside, and as I did so, I remembered the “Rules for Drawing” that are part of every lesson.
Rule #2 says, “2. It’s okay not to like everything you draw. Even famous artists do not like everything they create.
Interestingly, Rule #3 provides the encouragement to continue anyway:
“It is impossible to decide if you like your drawing before it is completed. THEN you can decide if you want to make a new drawing.
I decided to make a new drawing. This time, I DID like what I drew. You’ll see the new drawing—and an art lesson—in Level I. (Look for Four Suns with Four Faces)
In the end, persistence did pay off—as it usually does. It’s just that I had to persist a bit longer than I expected!
Teach your students persistence: Get the art lesson, Four Suns With Four Faces today!
Art teaches a lot of important life skills, and the best description of these skills is in Studio Thinking 2, a book by Hetland and others. Recently, midway in the process of creating a new art lesson based on folk art depictions of the sun, I found a poster that summarizes much of the book, and adds a few new insights as well.
Persistence
One of the life skills that visual art lessons teach, according to Studio Thinking, is PERSISTENCE. The poster uses another word: PERSEVERE. When we hear that art teaches us to persevere, it easily gives the (somewhat false) impression that if you just follow the process to the end, the art project will turn out fine. At least we’d like to think so.
However, experience often proves otherwise, as my work on the sun-as-art project demonstrated. Things don’t always turn out right!
For the lesson, I was aiming for a number of things:
-
It would be based on folk images of the sun
-
It would be a Level I lesson, and
-
It would be about warm and cool colors.
A short search revealed that people really like using images of the sun to decorate. I found clay suns on houses, brilliantly colored suns in a Mexican restaurant, and a metal sun with two kinds of eyes on the back door of a camper/bus. But the most interesting sun for the lesson (or so I thought, was a Haitian steel art sun that arranged the whole sky—sun, moon, and stars—in a circle. What could be more interesting!
I set out to create the lesson, and the further I went with the process, the more difficult the lesson seemed to be. First, the sun, moon, and stars were too close together for a beginning student to draw, so I separated them, pulling the moon away front the sun, and scattering the stars around the picture.
That looked good as a drawing, but I wanted to make this about warm and cool colors, so I thought it would be good to add some circles reminiscent of the original art work. Circles might give students better opportunity to explore the use of warm and cool colors.
As I continued, I kept having the nagging feeling that this project was NOT going to succeed. But we all know the rule: PERSEVERE! And so I did. When I finished, the project seemed too involved for our Level I lessons, and besides, it looked rather boring. It was a picture with no pizzaz. What child would be inspired by it to create their own picture of the sun?
It was time to toss the picture aside, and as I did so, I remembered the “Rules for Drawing” that are part of every lesson.
Rule #2 says, “2. It’s okay not to like everything you draw. Even famous artists do not like everything they create.
Interestingly, Rule #3 provides the encouragement to continue anyway:
“It is impossible to decide if you like your drawing before it is completed. THEN you can decide if you want to make a new drawing.
I decided to make a new drawing. This time, I DID like what I drew. You’ll see the new drawing—and an art lesson—in Level I. (Look for Four Suns with Four Faces)
In the end, persistence did pay off—as it usually does. It’s just that I had to persist a bit longer than I expected!
Teach your students persistence: Get the art lesson, Four Suns With Four Faces today!
Art teaches a lot of important life skills, and the best description of these skills is in Studio Thinking 2, a book by Hetland and others. Recently, midway in the process of creating a new art lesson based on folk art depictions of the sun, I found a poster that summarizes much of the book, and adds a few new insights as well.
Persistence
One of the life skills that visual art lessons teach, according to Studio Thinking, is PERSISTENCE. The poster uses another word: PERSEVERE. When we hear that art teaches us to persevere, it easily gives the (somewhat false) impression that if you just follow the process to the end, the art project will turn out fine. At least we’d like to think so.
However, experience often proves otherwise, as my work on the sun-as-art project demonstrated. Things don’t always turn out right!
For the lesson, I was aiming for a number of things:
-
It would be based on folk images of the sun
-
It would be a Level I lesson, and
-
It would be about warm and cool colors.
A short search revealed that people really like using images of the sun to decorate. I found clay suns on houses, brilliantly colored suns in a Mexican restaurant, and a metal sun with two kinds of eyes on the back door of a camper/bus. But the most interesting sun for the lesson (or so I thought, was a Haitian steel art sun that arranged the whole sky—sun, moon, and stars—in a circle. What could be more interesting!
I set out to create the lesson, and the further I went with the process, the more difficult the lesson seemed to be. First, the sun, moon, and stars were too close together for a beginning student to draw, so I separated them, pulling the moon away front the sun, and scattering the stars around the picture.
That looked good as a drawing, but I wanted to make this about warm and cool colors, so I thought it would be good to add some circles reminiscent of the original art work. Circles might give students better opportunity to explore the use of warm and cool colors.
As I continued, I kept having the nagging feeling that this project was NOT going to succeed. But we all know the rule: PERSEVERE! And so I did. When I finished, the project seemed too involved for our Level I lessons, and besides, it looked rather boring. It was a picture with no pizzaz. What child would be inspired by it to create their own picture of the sun?
It was time to toss the picture aside, and as I did so, I remembered the “Rules for Drawing” that are part of every lesson.
Rule #2 says, “2. It’s okay not to like everything you draw. Even famous artists do not like everything they create.
Interestingly, Rule #3 provides the encouragement to continue anyway:
“It is impossible to decide if you like your drawing before it is completed. THEN you can decide if you want to make a new drawing.
I decided to make a new drawing. This time, I DID like what I drew. You’ll see the new drawing—and an art lesson—in Level I. (Look for Four Suns with Four Faces)
In the end, persistence did pay off—as it usually does. It’s just that I had to persist a bit longer than I expected!
Teach your students persistence: Get the art lesson, Four Suns With Four Faces today!
