Together We Make Art

A three-lesson unit focusing on collaborative-interdisciplinary art making.

Rationale and Context: Art is never made within a vacuum. We are influenced by our environment, experiences, and those around us. Throughout these lessons students will work together like a professional studio to combine their creative strengths and to build finished artworks.

Lesson 1:

Designing Our Class Poster

Using only black and white, students will create a simple logo or mascot design that represents their personality, interests, or identity.

Learning Objectives

1. Students explore shape language within iconography and logo design through research and visual investigation.

2. Students demonstrate the importance of iteration by generating multiple logo or mascot concepts that represent their identity.

3. Students utilize digital tools to scan artwork and contribute to a class collage featuring all students’ logos in black and white.

Emphasis will be placed on exploring the technology used throughout the lesson, including skills such as scanning artwork and editing or cleaning up scanned images.

Lesson 2:

Exquisite Comic

Through a group activity similar to a story chain, students will collaboratively create a fun and surreal narrative. Students will then transform their narrative into a surreal comic.

Learning Objectives

1. Students will collaboratively generate a five part surreal narrative using a structured, limited-visibility prompt process.

2. Students will visually interpret text as a comic panel based on the collaborative narrative.

3. Students compile all five panels comics into an anthology using analog and digital tools.

Throughout the lesson, students will make interdisciplinary connections to creative writing. As they finish, they will practice their scanning skills from the previous lesson by cleaning up their scanned artwork. Students are expected to finish at different times; therefore, this provides an opportunity for them to demonstrate autonomy by scanning, cleaning, and submitting their comics independently.

Digital Version

Printed Version

Lesson 3:

Storyboard Studio: Building a Visual Story Together

"Exposition" In a quiet village nestled at the edge of a ark forest, Elka tes to her grandmother's lantern shop, where each lanturn holds a small whisper of starlight."

Storyboarding combines visual and narrative structure. Plot, character, setting, and pacing, are the keys to communicate moments and emotional beats in a story. Through a collective effort, much like real-world creative teams in animation, comics, and film, students will explore how individual artistic choices contribute to building a clear, effective, and personally meaningful larger narrative.

Learning Objectives

1. Students apply the elements of narrative structure, including introduction, rising action, climax, and resolution, to create a visual story.

2. Students contribute to a collaborative project by completing keyframe storyboard panels using traditional and/or digital methods.

3. Students demonstrate role-specific artistic skills such as character design, background development, and visual composition within a team setting.

Through these lessons, students will foster their design, writing, critical thinking, interpersonal communication, and technology skills. They will leave with real-world abilities that can be applied to other subjects as well as future careers. By scaffolding the difficulty of the lessons, students will leave the class feeling adept as storytellers and artists.

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