Modern schooling – 3D printed art project
Oh how the world has changed since ‘my day’. When I was at school, Art was all poster-paints and pencils. Now my 10-year-old son is 3D-printing his art project.
My son is in Year 5 of Primary school. He was given an art project to create something with the theme of ‘freedom’. Being the proto-geek he is, he created and 3D-printed a chick breaking out of an egg. He did all the design, using Tinkercad, and printing himself.
I’m going to be interested to see how his teacher rates it, given it is definitely not a traditional artwork. Then again if Jeff Koons can commission workers to give effect to his ideas, and go on to sell his creations for millions, is there intrinsically anything different in using a 3D-printer? We will see.
Anyway my son certainly put a lot of effort into it and learnt a great deal on the way. And being able to design using a 3D-CAD program may well be more useful in the long-run than using poster paints and pencils.
Don’t under rate the wealth of creative experience and conceptual development to be had with paint and pencils! It may well be that 3D CAD is automated to the degree that the skill is largely redundant sometime in the near future. (remember the goldmine that web design was going to be? Now most people just use a simple template).
Maybe the kids who learned to express themselves with simple materials will do OK in the future too!
Either way, the chicken in the egg looks like a great piece of work. Well done!
Yes I largely agree. The only bit of the project I really helped him with was a long discussion about the importance of white space in layout. I do find it interesting though that 3D printing allows for an expression of artistic intent regardless of your hand-eye coordination, much like photography did/does in comparison to painting. You still need to understand layout, design, what looks good, etc, etc but you don’t need to be able to control your hand to draw or sculpt.