Trail Heads by Patrick Dougherty

Trail Heads by Patrick Dougherty located at http://ncmoa.org/artnc/artifact.php?artifactid=64 is a great start to my integrated unit on forests and sustainability.  While looking at this work of art a lot of ideas came flooding through my head as ideas for beginning my lesson on forests, and again for concluding the unit.

The student will look at Trail Head and write a short journal entry about their feelings about it, what they see and what they believe it means.  As a group we will read about the work of art and the artist and discuss the importance of North Carolina forests and wildlife.  We will look for the various symbols and themes throughout. 

TLW understand that there are many different types of creative arts.  Each type of creative arts allows a person to show individual styles and expressions.  For each discipline of the creative arts there are many techniques and elements.  An artist can create illusions, get their point across, or even show their vision by using different elements and principals of art.  Each type of creative art helps to stimulate the brain and get the viewer thinking. An artist plans different elements in their artwork.  These elements include texture, line, shape, and form.  The texture describes the way something feels when touched.  The artist can create the illusion of texture by applying more paint, adding different types of lines and changing the brush strokes.  Lines are added to artwork to help create texture and breaks in artwork, the lines can be added in various ways.  The artist can draw a curved, straight, wavy or other type of line.  The artist can also join the lines together to create shapes. Shapes can be added to artwork in different designs, a square, triangle, oval, etc.  The shapes can be irregular or organic.  Shapes are flat and can be created by joining two or more lines together.  Forms are another type of element.  Unlike a shape, forms are three-dimensional.  Forms show height, width and thickness.   Students will be able to break apart the work of art and break it into themes, ideas and subject matter that the artist may have been trying to get across to the viewer as well as their own opinions and thoughts.