Boys choosing fashion design….as sign of changing times?

In 2015 I wrote a piece on this blog (entitled “Gender roles in the classroom”) about a situation in lessons where I give a class of 15-16 year olds a choice of practical assignments.  There is an architectural design assignment and a fashion design assignment.  The two variations are well balanced I feel and require similar amounts of effort and creativity on the part of the pupils.  I provide both possibilities with a good contextual build up and frame the challenges up for the pupils so that they have a very clear idea on what is on offer.

The post from 2015, seven years ago, referred to the fact that whilst a reasonable number on girls would choose the architecture assignment, there seemed to be an unbelievable reluctance amongst the boys to pick up the fashion challenge.  In 2015, I was pleased to have a total of one boy from several teaching groups who did.

However, in the intervening years I seem to be observing a change going on.  Year on year, the fashion designing boys in my groups has been starting to change.  Statistically the numbers involved in my classes aren’t big enough for concrete conclusions to be drawn, but there really does seem to be a bit of a movement in a particular direction.  This year I’ve reached the point where there are 50% of the boyswho have chosen the fashion route ahead of the architecture, something of a seismic shift in this limited creative sample.

It leads be to wonder if there is anything significant going on here.  Is there a switch away from the idea that anything involving clothes is only for girls?  Is there greater acceptance that role models and expectations of behaviours aligned purely to gender and choices have moved on? 

I’d like to think, certainly within the school where I teach, that that second point is the case.  It isn’t that we have an educational institution that is a utopia of acceptance and respect for all issues that in anyway touch on gender, education, behaviour and related areas.  But it is certainly true to say that great steps have been taken in the last ten years or so.  The entrenchment of a boy group and a girl group in each class is not what it once was I feel, maybe this reflects changes in society a broader level too?  But whatever the reasons, I’m certainly happy to see that pupils feel a freedom to choose in this area at least the assignments that interest or suit them the most.

What the art teacher did (outside of lesson times)

Art teachers are maybe not the most high-profile members of the teaching team in a school.  But perhaps more than most subject areas they are called on for extra input and support.  In fact, I often ponder the irony of teaching a subject area where pupils and parents often make the observation that there is no work to be found in choosing to study art, whilst I seem to be continually busy with my employer making full use of me (a fine art graduate) to carry out any number of creative tasks.  There clearly seems to be plenty of call for creative input and practical skills where I am!

I know I’m not stating anything new to most arts teachers.  We are requested to do so many tasks outside of the normal classroom activities.  There might be scenery needed for the school play, a poster for a party, a logo for a club, decoration or artworks needed for an empty corridor, an exhibition of pupils’ work to be organised for PR purposes, a design for a t-shirt or maybe critical input on the school’s prospectus or website.  I could go own, but I’m sure that you get the picture.

At my own school, amongst other things, I seem to have become the second line of graphic design.  We have an external bureau that designs material for us, but I am regularly asked to contribute with a poster, a flyer or animation film.  All areas I have no specialist training in but am interested to try my hand and have, over the years put in the hours learning to use the necessary software.

As with all design tasks, it always seems to take a lot longer than I expect to get to the final finished result, and a lot lot longer than most other people seem to think the process of design can take.  So why do it?  Well, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I enjoy the process and the challenge.  I’m not sure that I could design in this way full time, but the occasional work on the side is both interesting and satisfying when designs reach their final form.

A case in point are the five display boards that show our school history (it is our 75th anniversary).  I have put these together in collaboration with a colleague from the history department.  They are a combination of an interesting text, fascinating historical photographs and, even if I say it myself, some nice design work.  This time the finished product is going to stand outside of school for the next year, which is considerably longer than most other similar projects seem to last in the public eye!

Art, language and typefaces (a design project with a CLIL extension)

Since the restart of the school year back in August I have been working on a quite extensive art and language project with two of the third year groups (aged 14) that I teach. Essentially it is a design module that focuses on the fonts and typefaces but has involved:

• A photography assignment
• A black and white, graphic typeface design assignment
• A painting assignment exploring more painterly approaches
• A poetry assignment
• Digital illustration assignment
• A page design/layout assignment

Often with such a long drawn out assignment the challenge is to keep the energy going, but in this case, with the diversity of activities, I have never felt that to be a problem.

A brief summary of the art and design activities and a few of the results:

Typeface design made using found objects

Create a coherent font using objects that you find at home. Arrange at least five letters that clearly belong as a set and make use of the same types of objects.  The most significant challenge here is to get the pupils beyond the stage of using five pencils lying on the table to spell out a set of easy to create letters.  There are so many possibilities but it does require a kind of mental leap to bring the pupils to a point where they start to see the design possibilities.

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Typeface design using only black ink

This is the most purely design related step and before we get as far as using the ink we go through a series of design steps that first involve sketch designs of three quite different design ideas. One of these is then chosen and a series of design refinements using different types of letter are made. Finally we arrive at the ink work where a series of five or six letters from there font are inked in using brush and pen work.

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Painterly letters

After the graphic work of the previous assignment things become considerably looser in this coloured in and painting assignment as the pupils build on and further develop their design work.

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Poetry assignment

To include a significant language element into the assignment I ask the pupils to chooses the names on at least two typeface names (and there are so many to choose from!).  These names, be they Broadway, Cairo, Baskerville, Freestyle, etc. are the starting point for the creation for writing a short poem.  The names of the letter types have to actually be a part of the poem’s text, and ultimately when the poem is presented for marking the typefaces referred to must be used.

Fashion, Digitalization and geometry

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about wanting to tempt my pupils to think outside of the box a little when working on their fashion design project during the forthcoming weeks (click here for post).

I mentioned the work of Dutch designer Iris van Herpen. I’m familiar with her work from films and interviews, but had never seen any examples first-hand.

Last week I visited the Textile museum in Tilburg (in the southern Netherlands) for the first time. There was an exhibition of designs that made use of lace and related them to the history of lace in the fashion industry.

For me it was an Iris van Herpen design that stole the show, and if we are to be picky, it didn’t even make use of traditional lace. But it did make use of a digital, geometric latticework made on a laser cutter, using extremely thin skin plywood to create an amazing result.

As someone who has always liked a bit of geometry in their art and has an interest in digitalization in creative areas, there really was nothing not to like! Added to this was the way natural materials had been used in such a delicate combinations.

I left with a few ideas that potentially may one day find their way into my own drawings and paintings. I’ve been working a lot with web like masses of lines recently, van Herpen’s work has some interesting parallels to draw on.

 

 

Dare to think beyond the familiar – fashion design with teenagers

When teaching in the art room it is often surprising how hard you have to push pupils to get them to think creatively and challenge them to get them to go a step further than the familiar or their initial idea.  There are of course various issues that contribute to their cautious approach.  The pupils’ age, peer group pressure, the comfort and security provided by a familiar approach all play a part.  The whole general structure of an educational system that encourages pupils to think that there is often only a single way to be ‘right’ and an ‘interesting failure’ isn’t valued in many other areas other than in the art room.

All these sorts of thoughts occur to me often enough when working with the children that I teach who are all aged between the ages of 12 and 16.  But perhaps there is one assignment that I hand out once a year to the oldest groups that I teach that underlines the conservative artistic approaches more than most.  It is a fashion design assignment.  I should stress at the start that it is a ‘design’ assignment and not a ‘make’ assignment.  We have neither the time or the facilities to actually attempt to make the outfits that the pupils dream up.  In some ways this is a shame, but it does mean that the final assignment is only ever result in a drawing. This in turn means that the pupils can let their imagination run wild, their design is not ever going to be limited by their (or mine) abilities with a sewing machine!

I’ll be setting this assignment in motion again this week and I’ll be leaning heavily on the work of two designers who don’t necessarily let the practicalities of wearing of their creations be a limiting factor. Most of the pupils are aware, at least to a degree, of the catwalk shows from the various fashion week shows around the world.  They may, from time to time, have seen images of one or two ‘over the top’ designs.  However, asking them to push their imagination into these areas of creativity is very much the challenge.

The assignment that a colleague reworked last year to draw on the work of Dutch designer Iris van Herpen fits very much into these sorts of intentions and we will be making use of here creative process again.  Added to this will be photographs that I have made this week whilst visiting the Kunsthal in Rotterdam to see the exhibition by Thierry Mugler.   It was a very theatrical experience to visit the show.  Video projections met you as you entered the space and each separate room was referred to as an ‘Act’.  Some designs were stylish and elegant evening wear, but others were extraordinary for their exuberance strangely retro qualities. Bodices modelled on classic American automobile styling, sometimes complete with wing mirrors.  A series of ‘fembot’ cladding with their roots seemingly in the sci-fi cinema of the 1920s and 30s.  And finally, one outfit that was constructed with an array of exhaust pipes with clear motorcycle references.

I’m left with two thoughts.  Are these the designs to tempt my teenage designers to push the creative boat out, and are Mugler and van Herpen’s designs the ones to tempt the boys away from choosing the parallel running architect design assignment instead?

Apps that meet my art room needs (12-15 year olds)

 

I’ve been making use of iPads in my art lessons for a number of years.  Together with my pupils I have experimented quite a bit, discovered some very bad apps and some very good ones. I’ve enjoyed having a camera always close to hand, easy and rapid access to the internet and discovered that an iPad also works really well as a tray for carrying cups of coffee through the corridor! 

There are still things that I am searching for. For instance I am yet to find an app that works well enough and fine enough to give satisfying results for modelling and designing for a 3d printer. But maybe someone out there has a suggestion for me. 

So what are my favourites when it comes to combining the digital possibilities of the iPad with the more conventional materials in the art room?  First of all let me explain a couple of criteria I have (or are forced to have): 

·         Due to department and school restrictions the app must be free to use 

·         It mustn’t be overly and unnecessarily complex 

·         It must be reliable, no crashes or freezing screens 

·         It must offer truly creative possibilities, not just readymade routes to polished results (this is a particularly important criteria, there are way too many apps that simply do too much for you) 

Below are a few of my favourites at the moment and examples of pupil work that has been produced using them. 

PHOTO EDITING 

Photoshop mix (Difficulty level: initially seems quite complex, but really isn’t) 

Cutting out, rearranging and editing photos on the iPad in the first instance looks like it is going to be difficult with a relatively small screen and complex to do without a mouse.  Photoshop Mix from Adobe though makes this remarkably easy to carry out quite fine work and even the younger pupils grasp the principles of the app rapidly and are soon able to manipulate images made up of multiple parts on numerous layers. 

DRAWING AND PAINTING 

Bamboo Paper (Difficulty level: easy) 

The free version of Bamboo Paper comes with only two drawing tools and a limited collection of colours.  Despite these apparently enormous restrictions I use it every year with my youngest pupils.  It’s easy to use and has the by-product of forcing the pupils to be creative in discovering just what is possible with so few things to work with. 

Brushes Redux (Difficulty level: easy) 

Like Bamboo Paper, Brushes Redux doesn’t go overboard on the tools that it offers.  There are unlimited colours and a large collection of possible brushes but not a great deal more.  It is also a lot less graphic in the quality of the images that you make. It brings you closer to a painting or drawing with pastels sort of experience. The sampling of colours by touching a colour on the image on which you are working is useful, as is the possibility to import an image and work over the top of it is a facility that I have used in class.  Also the app allows you to reply i high speed animation of the drawing that you have been working on, a feature that is always popular with my pupils. 

Medibang Paint (Difficulty level: more complex, but offers so much) 

Medibang Paint (with its truly awful name) is a very complete, free, drawing app with a huge amount going for it.  Yes the screen space is often very crowded with the controls that are on offer, but get used to that and you start to ese the potential.  There is a huge selection of brushes on offer that can be modified,  photos can be imported and worked on and it has and interesting control feature that lets you manipulate the ways and directions in which your brushes work.  My older classes love it. 

GRAPHIC PAGE DESIGN AND POSTER LAYOUTS  

DesignPad (Difficulty level: more complex, but works well, even on the iPad’s relatively small screen) 

I use DesignPad with all age groups that I teach, beginning with a simple book cover design assignment with twelve year olds as a sort of orientation challenge.  After that comes poster design before progressing onto using it to plan the entire layout of a self-made book with my groups of fifteen year olds.  It requires a certain amount of getting your head around how it all works, but after that it is possible to use it for quite complex design challenges without ever having to leave the classroom to go and search out the desktop computers. 

Fine tuning and improving – a creative language and art assignment (clil)

You learn a lot from trying something for the first time with a class. An idea that was so clear in your head seems to create confusion or uncertainty in those of your pupils. Or something that you planned to fill just a couple of lessons takes three times as long to complete. This was one such assignment, one that has many good aspects to it, but when I experimented with it for the first time two years ago, I knew afterwards refinements had to be made.

The project is a really nice blend of language and imagery that comes together to produce a final piece of work that has considerable space for the pupil’s own ideas, has strong compositional challenges and can be completed with figurative and/or abstract elements. A full description of the working process can be found here.

The problem I had with the results last time was the language element. I remember at the time perhaps being in a little bit of a hurry to get onto the practical work. As a result, the language part (that comes first) didn’t get enough time and, dare I say it, a not critical enough push from me. The results were in the end reasonable, but the language output simply wasn’t as poetic, imaginative or grammatically fine-tuned as I had hoped. So this time, these were the areas for focus.

It’s an interesting challenge for my groups of fifteen year olds learning in English (their second language). I delivered them each a page of Wuthering Heights ask them to create something new with a selection of the words that are on the page that they have been given and obliterate the rest, or at least cover them over with their design work. It could result in a new and very concise new narrative, it could be a collection of phrases that read like a poem or the lyrics of a song, it could even result in a series of profound statements. But whichever direction they choose the text should be clear, make sense and be grammatically correct.

I did hammer on a bit about the grammatical criteria, but it did pay off. The results this year are definitely stronger in this area. Emily Brontë’s pages have been turned into something really quite different. The visual design is eye-catching, but the textual puzzle of sentence creation using limited means has produced some intriguing results.

 

I used to love him I cried heartbroken. 

I guess he would rather have her arms round his neck. 

I know he will never like me. 

Will I miss him? I asked myself half angrily. 

 

She, a woman, our mistress had said, it was nothing less than murder in her eyes, she kept aloof, and avoided any alliance with him.

Three years subsequent to my inclination, I was persuaded to leave, but tears were more powerful when I refused to go.

He wanted no women he said, no mistress.

I kissed good bye and, since then a stranger I’ve no doubt.

 

Those you term weak shall fight to the death. 

Have faith I advised her, value him more, melting into tears and delighted she replied. 

I wondered what he had been doing, how he had been living. 

He is too reckless, doesn’t trouble himself to reflect on the causes. 

 

Enough complaining, look at the evenings spent.

See the good.

Talk about anything, amuse me.

Talk is agitation.

Express feelings beautiful and sweet.

Pronounce words softer.

 

The accursed boy’d never know a dark absence would lavish the whole place in words of silence. 

As it persisted he cried, oh friends run away from me.

The frustrations of an art teacher…seeing it for real

You hear it often enough, ‘You have to see the real thing, it so different’. As an art teacher you know this well, the days of scratchy slides in a half darkened room may be long gone, replaced now by large scale digital screens at the front of the classroom.  The possibilities on offer to an art teachers (and all teachers of course) have improved enormously during the last decade. But still, the chance to see art, design, architecture, theatre, dance, music and other cultural forms for real, first hand, offers so much more.

A fabulous case in point is an exhibition of the Dutch fashion designer Jan Taminiau that I have visited today.  I’ve referred to his work in my lessons at school in the context of a fashion design assignment that I use with my groups of 15-16 year olds. Examples and cultural references are important in my work as a teacher. Not in the sense of showing pupils what I expect them to do. It is more a question of firing the imagination and showing them the possibilities; possibilities that often go way beyond their wildest imagination. There is so much that I’d like to show and share with them.

But the limitations of the classroom, even with its generous display screen at the front and pupils with tablet, laptop or phone screens available to them, can’t match seeing the real thing.  What it would mean to be able to bring my groups of budding fashion designers to the Centraalmuseum in Utrecht to see Taminiau’s exhibition?

The exhibition oozes qualities that grab your attention. The elegant silhouette’s that he creates, the rich use of colour and the, quite literally, dazzling textures and structures of the surface of the fabrics. This would have been the most amazing teaching aid to the above mentioned assignment.

I have photographically documented as much of the work as I can.  I’ll be using it next school year I’m sure.  Teaching fashion design is just a little outside of my comfort zone, but I do like to do it once in a while.  But oh, how I would like to let the pupils see such an exhibition. But then the same is true of so many of the shows that I see.  The museum world in the big cities, certainly in Europe, is booming. The challenge is finding a way to be able to get pupils to visit them in the context of the educational programs that they are following.  More often it seems to  happen in a rather detached sort of day out to the city that often seems to have rather vague educational aims……the fully focused and contextualized field trip is a sadly underused and rather squeezed out aspect of contemporary education. But the detail of that is a post for another day.

Feeling a bit like an artistic magician…..

It’s sometimes nice to make a big statement. To remind a school of the presence of the art department. It’s also nice when a relatively simple assignment catches the imagination of a whole class, both the ones at the artistic top of the class and the ones who generally find the creative lessons more challenging.

This particular lesson idea sets out to make a whole wall of art in the end. It is, if I’m honest, not the most creative assignment to offer a group of fifteen year olds. It kind of sets them on a line that of production with, for a part at least, a clear set of instructions to follow. But having said that, it does give opportunities to learn about a highly graphic way of working, layering and spatial relationships in drawing and the significance repetition can have in design. I was also able to add some Pop Art references and study and introduce the class to one of my favourite British artists in Michael Craig-Martin.

The work process involves filling an A4 with line drawings of a collection of the objects being taken as the theme of the work, importantly without any of them touching the edges of the paper. Then a careful cutting and reassembling of the pieces, before a little more drawing. Then it goes onto the glass of the copy machine and six (or many more!) copies are made before the copies are joined together in a completely repeating pattern. I promise you, the first time you show this to the class, you will feel like some sort of artistic magician!

This all sounds a bit complicated perhaps, watch this film and it will become a lot clearer!

Then a little colour work and very rapidly the wall filling work is complete. The front entrance of our school is currently being rebuilt, the wooden screens that have been put up offer that perfect location for the big statement.

Digitalization – finding the right fit

Forcing digitalization into education can be a painful affair. Some people might say ‘yes, that’s what they’re trying to do to the education situation that I work in!’  But that would be to misunderstand what I mean by forcing digitalization. I am absolutely for the use of digital technologies in education. What I mean though is that the use of computers, laptops, tablets and indeed phones have a place, of that I’m sure, but exactly what that place is may take time to find.

The school I teach at took a decision a few years ago to move to a form of computer aided education where every pupil works with their own iPad. I’ve been teaching art lessons with the possible digital dimensions that this offers for two and a half years now. Despite being one of the most progressive minded in the school when it comes to the iPad, I would also say that I am still finding my way with the device and uncovering the possibilities. It’s a fascinating process for me, and I think for my pupils.  Searching out for the opportunities where it offers extensions to a project, or perhaps simply something new and previously unconsidered.

A few of these curriculum enrichment situations have been exactly what I have been experiencing in the classroom this week and observing in the pupils results.

Last year I worked for the first time on a children’s book design project with the fourteen to fifteen year olds that I teach. In short, the pupils write and make an illustrated story book in which an artwork that they have previously researched plays a starring role.

Last year, each group of three produced and entirely handmade book. Illustrations were made, text was added either by writing it out by hand or printing it out on the computer and collaging it on to the illustrated pages. The results were satisfactory and in some cases good, but the problem we encountered in integrating the text was a bit of a puzzle. The classes worked well, but without the luxury of having the iPad to combine the language element with the illustrations.

This year though the situation is different and it is fascinating to watch. Groups are sharing tasks, stories are being written, handmade illustrations are being produced using the traditional materials, the artworks are being photographed, digitally enhanced where necessary before being inserted into page layouts and finally the text from the story is then laid on top.

I’m not quite finished with the assignment yet, but I’ve seen enough already to know that this is an example of digitalization extending a project into new areas. Groups are working genuinely as groups, sharing tasks and discussing what they are doing and working with a high level of engagement to produce and end product.  What was a good project has become an excellent one through a well-fitting digital extra element.

For those who are interested, the app we are using for the layout is the excellent Design Pad By Quark.