LINEAR PERSPECTIVE - PART II; TEAMING UP

One idea for teaching linear perspective: 
8th grade Surrealist drawing by Meagan, student artwork from Mrs. Nichols' classroom

This article is a follow up to "Linear Perspective; How Do You Teach It?" Here I have listed ideas from other teachers - call me crazy, but I love to study other art teachers' methods of instruction!  I read a book once, The Teaching Gap, where the authors compared the way math teachers taught 8th graders in Japan, Germany, and the U.S.A. In Japan, the teachers spent many hours working together to come up with the BEST way to teach a specific concept. The group watched one of their members teach the lesson, then they would re-group to discuss and analyze how effective it was. These teachers would have another member of the group teach the same lesson AGAIN, to a different group of students, and then analyze the effectiveness of that lesson.


How cool would it be if art teachers could team up this way, collectively figuring out the BEST way to teach otherwise challenging concepts like linear perspective and observational drawing? My supervisor, Stacia Jacks, wrote a grant a few years ago that provided a way for us to visit each other in our classrooms to observe and learn from each other. That was one of the best professional development experiences I have had!

This year, it just isn't possible to take a day off work to go observe another art teacher teach linear perspective. However, after posting the article below, I heard from a few other art teachers about what they do to solve the linear perspective conundrum:

• On the blog, Primarily Art With Mrs. Depp, the teacher scaffolds the lesson by using a series of dots to help the kids learn to draw lines with the ruler. This is a wonderful article by Sheryl Depp!

• There are also terrific resources here: One Point Perspective Worksheets, Dawn's Brain

• Laura Bailey tried using graph paper for her 6th grade students to practice keeping their horizontal and vertical lines straight - brilliant!

• Mohammad Dolatabadi suggested I use YouTube videos - I looked but initially couldn't find one that would capture middle school kids' attention. However, I did eventually find a great list of videos that Amy Zschaber (artfulartsyamy.com) has included in her article, Teaching Perspective in Creative and Engaging Manners. This one is pretty good, too: "Behind the Scenes With David Hockney; with Penn and Teller."

• I also found this YouTube video (iDraw) on the excellent blog by Alexandria Quinn called "Come To The Art Side; Thursday Think Tank - 1 Point Perspective," where she had her middle school students create a large perspective mural out of masking tape! This video below is a time-lapsed demonstration of an artist drawing an alley in 1-point perspective:

• That reminded me that in past years, I used this super short video from artsconnected.org, The Artist's Toolkit; Linear and Aerial Perspective. This is very good for young students because it is extremely simple and extremely short!

• Stacia Jacks suggested I differentiate my instruction, keeping it simple for 6th grade by just having them do "simple optical illusions using perspective points so they get used to using the ruler and measuring correctly."  Then, the kids who are ready for a challenge can do the "Imaginary Room" drawing while the others can just finish their optical illusion "Floating Form" design. 

• 

  Drawing from Mr. Beau Brown's classroom

   Middle school art teacher Beau Brown does a one-point perspective "Building" or "Town" project for his 6th graders where they draw:
  

  "three buildings, one below, one above and one that crosses the horizon line. The check list: 3 buildings like they went over. A pathway going to the vanishing point. A row of the same objects going to the VP. A sign in perspective saying the name of their town. 10 objects of their choice." He also says, "The majority gets it.
  

  You will have some that understand that the slanted lines that point to the VP is what makes depth, but they get confused when you tell them that things are supposed to be smaller in the background. And you get giants  walking next to skyscrapers.  Lol" (Mr. Brown also attached a brilliant Power Point presentation that he created and if I could I would upload it to this website - I can only upload videos and pictures at this time...)

• Jennifer Ellis, a high school art teacher, told me she has done this "Op-Art Name" lesson with younger kids and it seemed to work most of the time. She also reminded me that sometimes it is just the group of kids! 

• Casey Williamson, who has an exploratory class for only a few weeks with 6th grade, said that she doesn't teach perspective to 6th graders at all - only 7th and 8th graders! I laughed out loud when I read her email - why exactly have I been pulling my hair out trying to get mine to understand the concepts when I could just wait a year! 

• Finally, Kendell Stewart writes, "Tylenol...and good rest at night.  It is also difficult to teach at the high school level." Very funny, Mr. Stewart!

After I posted the below article ("Linear Perspective, How Do You Teach It?") about my struggles with teaching 6th graders, I paired each student with a peer helper and taught the entire lesson again; basically starting from scratch. (Half of the class previously understood the concepts, the other half did not.) I told the helpers that they wouldn't need to draw anything; their job was to watch their "trainee" to make sure s/he followed my directions. At the end of the 30 minute class every single student was able to construct a box correctly. (This was after watching the teacher draw one line at a time and WITH another student to help them!)

I think a lot of it relates to a simple inability to grasp abstract concepts. I believe some 6th graders (possibly) are just not developmentally ready to learn linear perspective in a more complex way. (The fact that 2/3 of the kids didn't have art in elementary school is a huge factor, too!) 

I have seen elementary art teacher blogs where they show the kids the vanishing point and horizon line and the students copy the teacher's drawing of a road exactly. Although this exercise is valuable, that is not what I am talking about here. I want my students to truly understand and be able to use the concept in increasingly complex ways, not to just copy a drawing. 

Piaget's theory of children's cognitive development says they cannot reason abstractly (Formal Operational Stage) until the age of 11 or 12 and we all know kids develop at varying rates. For children still in the Concrete Operational Stage (ages 7-11), thinking through a problem requires real, proven, non-hypothetical variables. 

My 6th grade project is to draw a Fantasy Room. I tell the kids to imagine they won a million dollars. If they suddenly became rich, what would they want to put in their rooms? The kids are very creative with their lists, but it is a different story when they try to draw their objects. To construct a bookshelf, sofa, swimming pool, or skateboard ramp out of thin air (from imagination) and make it follow the rules of perspective requires quite a bit of abstract reasoning! (I do show the class how to draw a bed, table, doors, and windows to get them started.) It remains to be seen if these kids will be able to construct a whole room!

In the future, I would LOVE to work with other middle school art teachers to design effective lessons; y'all, those Japanese teachers have inspired me! One way we could do this is via online video. I know that most of us are the only art teacher at our school, but we can video a lesson and talk about it! (videos need not be of students - we do not want to violate any privacy laws, folks...) 

Also, I thought of an idea wherein we could create an email help-line of sorts, where anyone who is interested could ask questions of other art teachers who teach the same grade level and/or demographic. Think about it - if you have a question about a technique, a material, or teaching a concept - you could throw it out into the email help-line and get a variety of perspectives from other experienced art teachers! I just might start one in my district - I am blessed that there are at least 8 other middle school art teachers here and there are more in other neighboring districts.  

What do all of you think? What are some other ideas that would enable us to work together to design effective lessons, despite the fact that we are all working in a different school and do not have the opportunity of walking down the hall to see another art teacher's instructional methods? 

Let's team up! 




**Here is a new Pinterest Board on perspective I  just put together in order to have some creative ideas on hand.





5-12-15 Note: I recently came across a post on the Art Teachers Facebook page by Michele Andrade. She teaches at a private, Christian K-8 school and has an incredible knack for teaching both linear perspective and craftsmanship. She did a one-point perspective room with 5th graders; the quality of these pieces was absolutely incredible, quality that only the best of my middle school kids achieve. Here is what she said about her instruction:

"Students learned about the history of perspective through p.p. and after practice, did a mini lesson called Shapes in Space. I then broke the students into three tiers (beginner, proficient, and advanced) based on their mini lessons. Depending on which level they were, the students were given a list of objects or requirements they needed to include in their final museums. The students always do their very best because they all want to be level 3 (the advanced level). any pencil (graphite or colored). ... I try to get my students to create a smooth surface, hiding their "line direction" by either coloring in circles, or coloring one direction and then going back over their work again in another direction. This technique takes time, but they really appreciate the results in the end. I believe neatness can be achieved by all students so on projects like linear perspective, I really push for it. It definitely makes a difference in these projects. Colored pencil is also my forte, so I give demos and let the students use the professional pencils which gives them the confidence to do good work."

March 29, 2017 note:Stick Figure Art: (this link takes you to Facebook)

 Step by Step One Point Room For Google Classroom Slide Show (this link takes you to the slide show which shows step by step how to draw a room as well as helpful hints and tricks...it is really good!)


The Mathematics of Sidewalk Illusions, by Fumiko Futamura, TED Ed Lessons Worth Sharing, teded.com 


article by Mrs. Anna Nichols

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LINEAR PERSPECTIVE - HOW DO YOU TEACH IT?

7th grade 1-pt. perspective hallway "narrative"

I have a love-hate relationship with linear perspective. It is a really cool way to set up 3-d space, and every year many of my students fall in love with it. My 8th graders draw the school building in 2-point perspective, the 7th graders draw the school hallway with 1-point perspective, and the 6th graders draw a "Fantasy Room," also with 1-point perspective. 

However, it is getting to be teeth-gritting difficult to teach my 6th graders how to use a vanishing point ... many of them come to my class having had little to no art instruction in elementary school. We lost the art unit at the largest one of our 3 feeder elementary schools several years ago, and I have sadly watched the quality of my 6th graders' artwork decline since. This is not the fault of the other two wonderful elementary art teachers we are blessed to have in our town - the 6th grade elective classes were also cut in half a few years ago. I now have 6th graders for only 30 minutes per day and I don't think I've quite adjusted to it. 

I think another part of the problem might possibly be that the kids think they can draw anything they please because "It's just art, right? You can express yourself, right? There is no bad art, etc."


 However, the technique of linear perspective is one of the things that is quite simply N O T subjective in art. 

How do you break this system down into simple parts so that young students can understand it? 

Here is a hilarious Youtube video by Kari Haan; she captures the universal frustration (and delight!) of teaching art in middle school, along with the typical student response to linear perspective: 

The following is how I have learned to do it (by trial and error) - if you have any suggestions, please let me know! I am always on the lookout for better ways to scaffold instruction and apparently my methods are not quite working this year .........

**For more resources on teaching perspective, click here: Linear Perspective, Part II, Teaming Up


To start with, I attempt to motivate the kids by showing some finished student drawings (so they can see what the eventual product might look like). Also, some years we look at comic book examples or famous drawings by M.C. Escher or British sidewalk chalk artist Julian Beever. Below is a 6th grade "Fantasy Room" drawing. The assignment is to draw a "Dream Room," where they can have anything they can possibly think of. Some kids will draw swimming pools, skate ramps, doorways into restaurants, etc.: 

The 7th grade finished product is an interpretive drawing of the school hallway drawn from observation:

The 8th graders learn 2-point perspective, observing and drawing the exterior of the school (we get to go outside, y'all!). Both 7th and 8th graders are given the assignment of filling their "empty stage" with characters, colors, designs, etc. and then writing a creative short story by using this drawing as one "scene" from the story:

I start the lessons for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade at the same basic level - drawing cubes with a vanishing point and horizon. To the right is an example of what I draw on the board, step-by-step:

I explain everything in detail, holding up a cardboard box as a visual aid. Almost all of the 7th and 8th grade students seem to catch on quickly, even if they never had art before. 







There are many of the 6th graders, however, who seem to be clueless. Here are some examples of their interpretations of my drawing on the board: 

Even though I showed them slowly, repeating the demonstration multiple times, some students had no horizon line and many were not even using the vanishing point or drawing lines with the ruler. Why couldn't they draw the figures after watching me?

Here is exactly how I teach linear perspective on the first day or so of the unit ...

BASIC SKILL - vocabulary knowledge:

Do the kids know what  the words, "horizontal" and "vertical" mean? I ask the whole class to:

• Step 1: hold your ruler (or arm) up and show me a horizontal line with your ruler
• Step 2: show me a vertical line with your ruler 

The point of this is to get everyone on the same page - the kids who aren't sure can look around the room to see how to do it. 
Also, I will (with a sparkle in my eye and my tongue-in-cheek) have my students take the "Ruler Oath," where they repeat after me that, "I promise I will not use this ruler as a sword. I will not use it as a drumstick. I will not use it as a saw. I will not spin it on my pencil, I will not bend or break the ruler, I promise I will not whack any other student with the ruler, etc. I will use this ruler in the manner in which it is intended - to draw straight lines." This usually gets the kids laughing and makes the rest of the class a lot more fun.

BASIC SKILLS - using a ruler to draw a straight line and drawing very light lines that are easily erased

The students use a scratch sheet of paper to:

• Step 3: practice using the ruler to draw 10 vertical lines very, very lightly
• Step 4: practice using the ruler to draw 10 horizontal lines very, very lightly.

I will teach the kids to "eyeball" these lines, comparing them to the edges of the paper to keep them straight (not diagonal). For example, they can look at the sides of the paper when drawing straight vertical lines or the top/bottom of the paper when drawing straight horizontal lines.

• Step 5: They then get a new sheet of paper and lightly draw a horizon line, from edge to edge. It should be somewhere in the middle for this practice drawing.

BASIC SKILL - using a vanishing point to create a sense of depth

• Step 6: The students then make a vanishing point, "the magic dot" somewhere on the horizon, this represents where the viewer's gaze ends on the horizon, almost like a laser-beam shooting "out yer eyeball."
• Step 7: Then, they will draw 4 squares - one above and to the left of the vanishing point/horizon line, one below and to the left, one above and to the right, and one below the horizon and to the right.
• Step 8: I will instruct them to, "Let the edge of your ruler touch 2 places: the corner of a square and the vanishing point, then draw a light line that goes from the corner of the square to the vanishing point. The ruler doesn't just touch the side of the square - it touches the corner. The edge of the ruler doesn't cover up the vanishing point, it just barely touches it."

 Here I will ask the students to repeat these instructions: "The edge of the ruler touches 2 places, which 2 places does the edge of the ruler touch?" They answer: "the corner and the vanishing point!" (Sometimes I will tell the kids that the ruler is like the hands of a clock - they are forever "stuck" to the center, and the ruler is forever "stuck" to the vanishing point.)

BASIC SKILL - drawing parallel lines to finish the "cubes"

• Step 9: I explain that every line has a "twin:" "What is the twin for a horizontal line? Another horizontal line, of course! What is the twin for a vertical line? Another vertical line! These lines you drew to the vanishing point would not really go back that far; the horizon is between 2 and 3 miles away! So, you've got to "chop off" the lines somewhere, and to do that you draw twins. They look just like the letter "L," sometimes upside down, sometimes backwards. Be careful not to let your horizontal and vertical lines become diagonal!"

   


As a matter of course, one would assume that having seen the teacher draw (and describe) the figures slowly, repeatedly, on the board, the students would understand how to do such figures. Is their difficulty developmental? Is it immaturity? Is it motivation or lack thereof? Is it the students' need for attention, their need to have the teacher explain it to him or her individually at the table? Hmmmmm.......

How in the world can I make things simpler? What are your suggestions?



article by Mrs. Anna Nichols