Why?
I used this project as a first project in a code+art elective a few years ago.
The reason I really like this project is that it can
- Focus students on practicing using the coordinate system & selecting colors
- Reduce anxiety for students who think they “can’t draw” because when constrained to one shape only, everything will by default be more abstract
How:
- Pose the question to students: “What can we draw if we are only limiting to drawing a single shape?”
- More often than not, students respond by saying there’s not too much they can do
- Show Damien Hirst’s painting Mickey (above) which uses only circles and a few colors to very successfully evoke a very famous character and sold for a lot of money.
- Live Code Demo to recreate Mickey as a class:
- Explain setup() and draw() functions
- Explain coordinate system
- Show how to use color functions: fill(), stroke(), background()
- Show how to use ellipse() and rect() (even though they have to only pick one to use)
- Launch them into creating their own One-Shape Drawings using only a single shape.
Extras Treats:
- Collect everyone’s sketches to share with the class
- Print out all students’ sketches, then put together a gallery walk of One-Shape Drawings
Things that I think would be fun to try:
- Lesson in animating colors, so that the one-shape drawing can slowly fade from one set of colors to another
- What might happen if students change all of their ellipse commands to rect? Or vice versa? How would the drawings look?