This year I have returned to teaching our advanced studio art classes along with one section of our foundations level class at Stone Ridge. I know I mentioned this in my last post, but I am so excited about this! Since our previous teacher in this position was transitioning to another position I though it was a sign that I could use a little change, and something to force me to shake up my teaching. In my 8 years at Stone Ridge I had worked hard to develop a strong Foundations of Studio Art course, but after almost a decade I felt like I wasn’t innovating my lesson plans like I used to. My principal gave me the green light and I was like “alright, let’s shake things up!” … and then March 2020 happened and the world shook things up more than I could have ever expected.
My Studio II class is a large section with a fair number of students who I taught last year. This was nice from a relationship building perspective. So we started the year with something I knew many of them were comfortable with: portraits! I’m planning on having them attempt a self portrait at the end of the year as well, so I will hopefully be able to show you those as “before and afters” later on. Then we moved into a technique they had used successfully last year, gridding, but with a subject I knew we hadn’t had time to cover last year, landscapes!
Below you will see both charcoal and acrylic landscapes because I had this brilliant idea that we could alternate between the two as students cycled in and out. Both used the grid methodWe are doing hybrid instruction and I have half of my students simultaneously in-person and joining from home virtually. This strategy did not work out because students ended up having too many disruptions to the schedule, so I have moved back to the “one project at a time” model for now. But here you can see they still came up with wonderful work despite our disruptions. All photo credits go to my students!
Emma Teaches Art! 
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