Art: Growth Mindset in Art

This week the Art Department at St Andrews International School Bangkok has been reflecting on what the concept of growth mindset means to us in art.

Across High School subjects students are encouraged to adopt a ‘growth mindset’, actively seeking feedback on how to improve the quality of their work and persevering in the face of challenges. Many people believe that students either have a natural ability to draw or are simply ‘no good at art’. In the STA Art Department we prefer to believe that there is no wrong answer in art and that the quality of student artwork can be enhanced in many different ways, such as how effectively an idea is communicated or how techniques and processes have been manipulated to suit a student’s intentions. The bottom line is that hard work always leads to better results and in art hard work means two things, sustained experimentation and creative risk-taking. We believe these are the key attributes that define the growth mindset in art. This week Year 8 students are working on developing a Cubist style still life composition and have been asked to use a combination of tonal drawing, collage and 3D card construction. The work is highly experimental and we have been very impressed with how our young artists have risen to this creative challenge and demonstrating some ‘out of the box’ thinking. Here are some examples of their work in progress. (Work by Anna, Doris, Chicha and Pin)

Artist of the Week

This week our ‘Artist of the Week’ award goes to Emma Cha in Year 8. Emma’s Cubist still life drawing cleverly uses multiple perspectives to create a layered and complex composition. Her subtle use of graduated tone adds to the suggestion of shallow depth.