what if?

What if I just put out a bunch of art materials and don't do a lesson? What if I ask students to think about other art they've done? What if I tell them to do something similar to something they've already done, but to change it somehow or, if they want, to just explore?

One student might draw herself in a garden, surrounded by a rainbow, under a rainy-sunny-starry sky:



Another student might explore lines with watercolor and crayon:



Somebody might do a bird collage:



Somebody else might do a three-dimensional line collage:



Somebody might do a shape rubbing:



Somebody else might draw or trace a series of rectangles and fill them with colorful patterns:



And somebody else might make a collage of the sun: