Landscape paintings are more than just portraits of a landscape. A landscape artist must decide what elements to emphasize and what to leave out. In this exercise, you will teach your students about painting a landscape, but also about how artists make decisions about what subject matter they focus on. To start this assignment, give your students a photo of a landscape. Ask them to do two versions of the landscape. In one version, they’ll do it in a romantic realist style. They’ll leave out unsightly objects like power lines or an ill-placed tree or car. In the other, they’ll paint in the style of stark realism, recreating exactly what they see, including the flaws. Once they complete their two paintings, have a class discussion about why they made the artistic choices they did.
Graphic novels tell stories through pictures. To do this assignment, ask the students to select a short news story they’d like to illustrate. Tell them to write a script based upon it. They’ll select a portion of the story they’d like to make into a comic; they should draw the equivalent of two printed pages. They’ll start drawing rough sketches of the scenes. This helps them block out the visual composition, plan the best shots to tell the story and to determine if their scripts make visual sense as they are written. It’s important that you assign only one to two comic pages. If you ask students to do too much, they might become overwhelmed. The purpose of this assignment is to teach them how to plan out a drawing and to develop their visual storytelling skills.
This assignment can be a stand-alone assignment or one that builds on the skills the students learn in a graphic novel or storyboarding assignment. Students will develop a visual essay and write a story about someone they know. They’re going to interview their subject, making an audio recording of the conversation. They’ll also take a series of photographs of the person during the interview. Ideally, the subject matter of the photographs should match what they’re talking about. The students will assemble these items into story format using editing software for film and video. To complete this exercise, students will need a camera-digital would be easiest for this assignment. They’ll also need audio-recording equipment, although it doesn’t have to be fancy. They’ll download Audacity free audio-editing software and use the film editing software that comes with their computer. (See Resources for digital storytelling information)