SUGGESTED PLAN FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE PRINCIPLE OF PROPORTION AND ITS USE
- General objective.—To develop ability to—
- Select articles which are pleasing because of good proportions.
- Adapt and make pleasing proportions as needed.
- Specific objective.—To develop ability to—
- Divide a space so the resulting parts are pleasing in their relationship to each other and to the whole.
Assume that the group to be taught is a ninth-grade class in art related to the home. Very few members of the class have had any previous art training and such training has consisted of some drawing and water-color work in the lower grades. Previous to this lesson, it is assumed that the teacher has developed the pupils' interest in the beauty to be seen and enjoyed in the everyday surroundings of their community, and has developed pupil ability to understand and to use a principle of proportion, namely, that a shape is most pleasing when one side is about one and one-half times as long as the other.
The establishment of the above principle has probably given the class an opportunity to read of the Golden Oblong or the Greek Law of proportion in an art reference such as Goldstein's Art in Everyday Life. This will have served to further establish a feeling for interesting shape relationships and also will have made the pupils familiar with the term "proportion." The class may or may not have developed an ability to recognize and use the principles of balance.
Details of Lesson Procedure
Problems and questions to introduce the principle needed to solve this and many similar problems
The first-aid room in the school is very bare and cheerless. Miss M., the school nurse, and Mr. B., the superintendent, have decided that some thin ruffled curtains at the two windows will soften the light and make the room more homelike. Miss M. has purchased some ready-made curtains and has asked if the class would like to determine the best way to arrange the tie backs. "How many of you think that this is an art problem? Will it be helpful to us to know how to divide a window space with curtains? Tie-back, ruffled curtains have been very much in vogue for some time. The models in the drapery departments and the illustrated advertisements show a variety of methods to use. Since there is so much variation, how can we be sure that curtains are tied back in the most attractive way possible?"
Use of illustrative materials
The curtains have been hung at the two windows in the first-aid room. At one window the curtains are not tied back and come to the bottom of the casing, at the other one they are arranged in two other ways designated as A and B. By the A method the curtain is tied back exactly in half; by the B method it is tied back between one-half and two-thirds of the length. The initial question would probably be: "Which of these two arrangements, A and B, do you think contributes most to the appearance of the window?"
Class discussion