Lesson Idea
Nature / Form / Shapes / Similarities / Organic
How can students learn to observe forms found in our natural surroundings and apply substitution
(from the creative thinking strategy, S.C.A.M.P.E.R.)?
This lesson can be adapted for secondary three students and JC 1 students.
Instruction
Students will:
- Visit a garden, park or nature reserve near the school. See https://www.nparks.gov.sg/
- React, respond, research and reflect to forms found in local flora
- Sketch and depict segments of flowers from direct observation
- Encourage students to exercise close observation on interesting looking plants (e.g.Heliconias and other tropical plants)
- (Extension) students produce a silhouette drawing of their chosen flower.
- Draw similarities between the form of the chosen flower to parts of the human body
- Photograph flowers using macro lenses
- Explore concepts in Surrealism, such as the term “the recognizable yet unfamiliar”. (Use Salvador Dali’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Vertumnus by Giuseppe Arcimboldo)
- Participate in critique sessions at intervals, such as during ideation, Marquette-making-phase and after completing the artworks. Students take turns to take and give feedback on their progress, challenges and successes.
- (Extension) Curate and exhibit student works. Refer to Marc Quinn’s Garden (an impossible garden) for ideas.
Elegant art task(s)
Simulacra:
- Produce an uncanny digital image that shows a flower, but with its parts substituted with something else (e.g. human body parts, surface texture of other objects).
- Produce an organic-shaped sculpture that combines a human figure and flowers (part human, part flora).
aedge 