Ezra Pound, Spheres, and Freshmen

Before leather working consumed my time, I developed a passion for art journaling.

The idea of illustrating poetry through art journaling flowed, of course, into my freshman class.

One project I guided students through combined spheres/shading with Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro."

As per norm, here's the process!

Introduction to shading

I tend to start off with the art skill when leading an arts integrated class. It jolts the students out of their normal and gives them something busy to do with their hands that isn't texting.

They used circle templates or compasses rather than sketching their circles, and then we went over the process of shading a sphere.

Introduction to facial proportions

At the time I was following a lot of James Luke Burke Creative on Instagram, and he was drawing faces with circles, and the outcomes were odd and delightful.

I transferred that idea over to our class and taught the facial proportion on each circle.

Then, we put spheres at the mouth, nose, cheek, and eye areas to keep the shading practice going! It got a little strange...

Introduction to the poem

I talked the poem up: we were going to spend two days reading this thing, I'm so sorry I'm making you do this, this is graduate level reading...and then the big reveal.

In a Station of the Metro

by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.

We discussed rhythm, imagery, sounds--all the things that make this poem amazing.

Finally...

Introduction to art journaling

The students spent some time creating a page that illustrated the poem. They had to include at least one sphere face and the words: everything else was up to them.

Now that I have more experience in both art journaling and arts integration, I know how'd I'd tweak the lesson, but the students (mostly) enjoyed the experience!