Submitted by: Amy Ropple, Parker Middle School in Reading, Massachusetts
How to Stay Creative?
Introduction: Amy heard an artist speak about creativity the night before she she did this assignment who included a list of her own ideas that was quite similar to similar to what Amy's students came up with. The speaker's presentation sparked the idea for this lesson with her 8th grade art elective classes.
The Problem: List rules that artists should remember in order to stay creative with their work, and to keep challenging themselves.
Students came up with the list below without input from Amy or paraphrasing on her part.
13 Rules for Artists:
How to Challenge Yourself and Stay Creative
- Do something new each time you make a piece of art.
- Try new materials and processes. Don’t limit yourself!
- Keep an open mind.
- LOOK around you.
- Don’t get upset about the artwork you make. If you aren’t happy with a project, don’t throw it out. When you are done with it, someone else might like it and then you will too.
- After mastering one way of working with an idea, try doing it a different way – you might get a better result.
- Try never to do the exact same thing twice.
- Learn background information and do research about the idea you are interested in working on.
- Keep the fun of art alive!
- Get opinions from others.
- Do something original. Copying is for learning only. Use your own ideas in your art.
- Practice = growth.
- Stay focused. If you don’t, you will lose track of your idea and your project won’t come out as well as it could .