Art education: creating a studio project for secondary students (hornbill figure) - Essay Example

Art Education: Creating a Studio Project for Secondary (Hornbill Figure) The ‘Hornbill Figure’ based upon original conception of its pioneer Iban creators is widely known to be made through wood sculpting. However, since the cultural art piece over time has apparently required serious endeavor toward accomplishment, skills, and appreciation of its ethnic and religious worth at depth, only those who have professed or worked extensively may come up with the expected details given the appropriate resources.

Carving wood with consideration even to average standards at least would most likely seem an amply tedious work for secondary students of grades 7 to 12. As an alternative, ‘nature collage’ may be proposed to allow the students the flexibility to express the hornbill’s thematic feature in a variety of ways it would suit to represent this portion of the Malay culture and historical context as perceived by each person. With this proposition, secondary art learners are given the opportunity to utilize natural materials compatible or relative to the components of the original 3D-version.

After briefing the students with some important accounts about the hornbill image for inspiration, the instructor can then impart basic ideas regarding the constituents needed for the project. Either derived naturally or recycled sources and depending on the availability of which, students may find value in collecting twigs, leaves, sand, shells, nuts, pebbles, and different stones. Fine wood strips, sprigs, and certain stones may constitute the body of the bird and may be adhered onto a cardboard or poster paper by gel medium or acrylic transfer.

By using dried leaves and flowers to surround the main subject, with emphasis on the skeletal frame through textured paint application, every child in the class discovers the essence of putting antiquity or style by which to indicate a period in history when the hornbill figure with all its identified significance had been well around and revered. With recycled objects in assortment including old magazines, cotton, fibers, and cloth, pupils may be encouraged to contextualize the theme all the more.

Paper cutouts of British items that had existed during English colonization of Borneo for instance, can aid in manifesting foreign influences to natives and consequently to the thoughts that impacted the attitude and mechanism employed by wood carvers of the past. Blending in gemstones or forms of embellishments close to the elements comprised in the authentic hornbill model, if necessary, may enhance the overall desired effect as well. In adopting ‘nature collage’ for the studio project, the art teacher increases each child’s potential to explore with colors and choice of spatial orientation of materials especially for the hornbill’s case where a number of possibilities on assembling the collage can be imagined with ease and growing interest.

Collage dimension furthermore can be made to appear like a chiseled portrait to capture an appreciable degree of similarity with the sculpted firsthand creation.