High School students can abstract or reduce an original watercolor painting into a series of strips to produce a visual explosion of shapes, lines, and colors still recognizable as original. (AM)

By displaying slides or prints of paintings, by reading and discussing related poems, and by having students write their own poems on what they see, teachers can expose art students to a new view of poetry and visual arts. A list of poems and paintings to compare is included. (RM)

Vincent Van Gogh's painting "The Starry Night" is discussed, and ways that an art teacher can use this painting as a resource for learning are suggested. Specific activities to use with elementary and secondary students are included. (RM)

There are five categories of titles of paintings: descriptive, narrative, directive, poetic, and arbitrary. When children title their work they give clues to its intent and challenge the presuppositions that adults may bring to children's art. Titling can expand students' ideas for painting and provide a greater variety of approaches. (CS)

While Henri Rousseau's work was not easily classified into any definitive artistic style of the time--impressionism, post-impressionism, fauvism, or cubism--it has been considered a forerunner of surrealism because of its dreamlike sensibility. This teaching guide provides information about Rousseau and his work, focusing on "Tropical Forest…

In this experiment in description, students in a high school honors English class were asked to select a surrealistic painting and capture it in writing. Their compositions were given to art students who tried to reproduce the paintings from the written descriptions. (SJL)

Describes the use of a simple and familiar medium, finger paints, to get high school students to explore problems of design in painting. (SJL)

Students designed and painted their school's walls in a massive school enlivening project. (Author/RK)

In this art activity gifted students, ages 10 to 13, learn about internal and external rhythms and make a painting of an internal rhythm. The lesson can be expanded with a discussion of Kandinsky, Pollock, and other painters who have painted sound or have demonstrated rhythms. (RM)

Five articles describe techniques of mural making and mural projects which have been accomplished by elementary and secondary students, including a class of blind and partially sighted children. (SJL)

Using three specific works of art, the author demonstrates how a study of selected landscape paintings can be integrated into units on landforms in secondary school earth science and general science courses. (Author/SJL)

Describes a mural project designed to introduce students to the concept of overlapping similar images as a way of depicting a time sequence. This article is one of four articles in this issue on elementary-level mural projects. (Author/SJL)

Seventh graders reacted enthusiastically to this watercolor art activity. A blank piece of white drawing paper was soaked in water and then removed to a newspaper-covered table. Students held a brush full of watercolor above the paper and squeezed the bristles. When the droplets hit the surface, they spread beautifully. (RM)

Instructional strategies based on a portrait painting of Francisco Goya introduce primary grade students to the idea that portraits are pictures of people. Students also develop an awareness that the visual vocabulary of color, shape, line, texture, and the quality of brushstrokes can communicate feelings and ideas. (RM)

Instructional strategies based on a portrait painting of Jean-Baptiste Oudry familiarize intermediate grade students with the techniques of portraiture and introduce the characteristics of eighteenth-century French rococo painting. (RM)