Authentic Art: 3 Ways to Rescue Cookie-Cutter Craft Projects
For many kids, creating art can be one of the most rewarding activities. It’s an opportunity to let their imaginations run wild and experiment with their favorite colors and materials to produce something beautiful and authentic.
Here's the thing, though. We really have to give careful consideration to what we are asking kids to do when we call what we are doing "art." If we want them to copy our process to the extent their work looks a lot like ours, "art" might not be the best word.
Without getting too far into the weeds of semantics, lets just say we are talking about what is known in the art ed world as cookie-cutter, copycat projects in this post. These are the projects that all look extremely similar to the one the teacher or lesson designer created.
Why Focus on Authentic Art
One of my colleagues once asked me why I insisted on authenticity in student artwork. She showed me something her child had created, and I immediately recognized the lesson from seeing it on Pinterest. As the mom, she loved it! It was beautiful, but it looked exactly like all of the other ones on Pinterest, down to the colors and number of lines in the background pattern.
My colleague thought it was fine that it looked so cookie-cutter. This led to a friendly convo about why I wouldn't just let them all copy my exact steps if it could help ensure more kids had more perfect-looking pieces in the end.
I say this all the time, but I believe there is a time and place for that. Sometimes it takes these kinds of low-risk processes when you are building relationships with your students. Sometimes the need to produce products trumps whatever process goes into it. I've definitely been there! I'm reliving in my mind the time an admin promised a local doctor a large number of artworks to frame for their office in a short amount of time.
So, to be clear, there is a time in a place for this, and I am not knocking anyone's curriculum. I would never, ever do that. Everyone is working hard, everyone is doing their best, and there is plenty of good to be found in all of that.
Striking a Balance is Key
To answer my colleague's question, I explained all of the above, plus:
Children learn best when they’re allowed to make mistakes, but that doesn’t mean we should just sit back and watch them make art projects we know are going to end in disaster. There is a very fine balance to strive for here.
They grow when they fail and reflect on what went wrong and what can be done better next time. They grow when they are allowed to think critically through processes. They make plans, assess their work, then make changes to the plan as needed based on those assessments.
We can create safe places for students to do this kind of vulnerable work. We can structure the experience so that there's room for the students to create and make their own decisions about their work while they also meet our expectations and adhere to boundaries.
The more space you can give students to try things on their own, the more they will grow. Let me count the ways:
taking calculated risks
engaging in meaningful self-reflection
giving and receiving feedback
listening and following directions
attention to detail
planning and executing an action
and so on.
So, if you can provide that kind of deep learning experiences for your students, why wouldn't you? Everyone will be better off as human beings in the long run. I much prefer improved human thinkers to a cute cookie-cutter art product.
Inevitably, we will all look up from teaching and realize that what we thought was going to be an open-ended process is resulting in our worst nightmare of a copy-the-teacher mess. Here are a few tips for helping students fix work that is starting to look cookie-cutter:
Paint Over It
Take an opaque, lighter shade of paint and just paint right over the whole thing or the parts that aren't right. You will end up with some interesting textures, but those will most likely give the work some aesthetic interest. One of my favorite paints to use for this is craft acrylic, the cheap kind (see below) in an off white color. You can also mix this paint with a bit of any color to create an opaque shade that will work as well. Trust me, if you let them paint over even a part of their work, you'll immediately see the pieces start to look different from one another.
Trace Over It
This is a fairly simple trick for fixing artwork when the lines aren't quite right. Take a dark permanent marker and have the students trace over their lines two times. This creates some interesting lines that will hide any oddities or mistakes in the drawing. This is one of my favorite things to have students do. We have seen some truly remarkable works of art that stem from this very process. The students will look at you like you are crazy when you say trace it two times. Just tell them to trust you, and you will notice immediately how the pieces start to differentiate.
Cut It Out And Glue
Another way to fix an art project when all the works are starting to look too similar is to isolate what isn’t working. Have the students cut apart and/or cut out what isn’t needed or working. Then, have them glue it back in a different place. This will definitely make the works start to look more individualistic.
Context is Important
I have to remind myself of this regularly, but the context in which an artwork is created does matter. While we can all probably look at a student work and figure out the process, and whether that process was cookie-cutter or more open-ended, we don't really know the context unless we talk to the teacher or students. It is important to know what choices were made in choosing the lesson and methodology. It is just as important to know the process and what the learning targets were of projects we see from other classrooms as it is for us to carefully consider the processes we have our students focus on when we are designing our own lessons.
Conclusion
What are your thoughts on this? I know this can be a controversial topic, but it is one that will always be important to discuss. Let me know! I look forward to hearing from you.
Here are some of the materials mentioned in the post:
