Project Description
In this micro-project, our voices and opinions are IMPORTANT! We analyzed the US Declaration of Independence through the eyes of Frederick Douglass, a slave; they found that maybe, this country has not upheld all of its promises or has contradicted its own reasoning about why it needed to form in the first place. Our mission was to find promises or dreams written in the Declaration of Independence that have not come to fruition today (or are problematic in one way or another). We chose topics such as Immigration, Police Brutality, and Gender Rights. And created provocative, complex, and nuanced political cartoons to express our thoughts and draw awareness to these issues. We, in a newspaper format, will distribute our cartoons to the rest of our student body. With an in depth study of the formation of the US, from topics such as law to conquistadors to immigration, we were asked to go on a journey to explore the tensions between the original foundation of this country and it's current state.
In this micro-project, our voices and opinions are IMPORTANT! We analyzed the US Declaration of Independence through the eyes of Frederick Douglass, a slave; they found that maybe, this country has not upheld all of its promises or has contradicted its own reasoning about why it needed to form in the first place. Our mission was to find promises or dreams written in the Declaration of Independence that have not come to fruition today (or are problematic in one way or another). We chose topics such as Immigration, Police Brutality, and Gender Rights. And created provocative, complex, and nuanced political cartoons to express our thoughts and draw awareness to these issues. We, in a newspaper format, will distribute our cartoons to the rest of our student body. With an in depth study of the formation of the US, from topics such as law to conquistadors to immigration, we were asked to go on a journey to explore the tensions between the original foundation of this country and it's current state.
Habits of Heart
- A habit of heart and mind i grew in would be Evidence because i was able to improve not only my political cartoon, so it would relate better to my topic. But my C-E-R as well by getting critique from piers to check my work and see if they could analyze my cartoon and help me improve.
- A habit of heart and mind i struggled in was Mindfulness because i would get distracted and by doing that i would disturb my piers and distract them from working on their own cartoon.
Process
To start the project we first made multiple drafts of ourselves using pictures to make us into a cartoon. Everyone made an average of three drafts including their final one and we got lots of pier critiques and gallery walks. I believe this was so we would get in the mood for drawing cartoons. From there we practiced finding symbolism in political cartoons made from other artist. After that, we all took a couple days to research a topic we wanted and make our first draft of our cartoon. Then came even more critique so we could find the good points of our drawing and find the points we needed to improve on. Next we made our second drafts which were refined versions of the first one but now we practiced hatching to give it more detail and emphasize important parts of our cartoon. After our last round of critique from teachers we could move on to our final draft where we used larger sheets of paper with one inch borders to sketch and ink our final political cartoon
Takeaway:
- My biggest takeaway from this project is experiencing drawing the final draft of the political cartoon because watching the ink go on the final paper made it all come to life.