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Resources, Lessons, & Student Examples
MS Art Education, Florida State University | May 2025
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Personality & Printmaking
Unit | Secondary
Students use the findings of an introductory personality test to inspire the selection of a “spirit animal.” They then create a (rubber) block print of this animal and explain how their introspection was communicated by subsequent artistic choices.
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This unit was originally made for the Painting I & II students of Horizon High School.
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Abstract Objectives:
Engage in self-discovery to identify and articulate artistic choices used to achieve symbolic self-representation.
Skill-Based Objectives:
Block Printing (Carving, Positive & Negative Space, Spatial Awareness & Planning, Printmaking).
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Place & Perspective
Unit | Secondary
In this unit, instruction is scaffolded with formative assessment and feedback until students are prompted to depict a place of personal significance by employing 2 and 3-point perspective drawing processes and intermediate watercolor techniques.
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This unit was originally made for the Painting I & II students of Horizon High School.
Abstract Objectives:
The pervasive theme and influence of “place” in art and experience.
Skill-Based Objectives:
Use of two or three-point perspective in intermediate watercolor artworks.
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Lego Printmaking
Lesson | Elementary, Secondary
Students arrange flat LEGOs onto a plate to design an informative poster bringing awareness to and inspiring care of Florida’s endangered wildlife.
This lesson was originally made for FSU Summer Art Camps 2024, themed ‘flora and fauna’.
Abstract Objectives:
Identification and awareness of endangered species, particularly those in Florida.
Skill-Based Objectives:
Printmaking, Use of Grids, Properties of Reflection-Drawing, Spatial Planning.
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Non-Literal Self Portraits
Short Unit | Elementary, Middle
Students participate in a visual ‘mad-libs’ and assemble the resulting elements into a non-literal self-portrait, relating their work to that of other influential abstract artists.
Abstract Objectives:
Engage in self-discovery to identify and articulate artistic choices used in symbolic self-representation.
Skill-Based Objectives:
Use existing drawing skills to assemble an abstract artwork, given a limited set of elements.
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Habitats & Spatial Planes
Lesson | Elementary
Students use various construction techniques to create 3D animal habitat dioramas that exhibit an understanding of spatial planes in art and the relationship between environments and their inhabitants.
This lesson was originally made for FSU Summer Art Camps 2024, themed ‘flora and fauna’.
Abstract Objectives:
Understand and represent how animals reflect their environments and vice versa; Identification of foreground, midground, and background.
Skill-Based Objectives:
Construction of a 3D space using various construction techniques.
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Watercolor Field Journals
Lesson | Elementary, Secondary
Students simulate the practices of historical naturalists by painting on the go to depict their outdoor locations and establish a familiarity with drawing live subjects.
This lesson was originally made for FSU Summer Art Camps 2024, themed ‘flora and fauna’.
Abstract Objectives:
Understand the role artists have played throughout the history of scientific discovery by depicting the natural world for scientists’ publications.
Skill-Based Objectives:
Painting from Life, Mobile Art-Making, Basic Watercolor Techniques.
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Hands & History
Short Unit | Secondary
In this short unit, students learn to draw and paint hands, mix skin tones, and express bodily symbolism by painting American Sign Language signs in a background themed to their meaning/s. These paintings were later gifted to the ASL classroom of HHS.
This unit was originally made for the Painting I & II students of Horizon High School.
Abstract Objectives:
Understand and synthesize the role of hands throughout art history as a representation for greater cultural context to the common era.
Skill-Based Objectives:
Deriving Geometric relationships in Organic Subjects, Drawing from Life, Proportion, Color Theory, Drawing and Painting of Hands.
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Foam Printing
Activity | Elementary, Secondary
This lesson was originally made as an activity for early finishers within the Personality & Printmaking unit.