Case Study Group Assignment

To start our group assignment the 5 of us arranged an online Teams meeting for Tuesday.
All five of us, Myself (Adele Gemmell), Madison Tozer, Vy Ngo-McKillop, Shannon Philips,
and Josie Sheehan attended the first meeting. During this first meeting we collectively chose to
use the research question: What is the role of imagination and fantasy in the artwork of young
children. While we were still online, each of us logged onto the Global Children’s Art Gallery
(n.d) and used the random button to “select” our two chosen images which we shared with the
rest of the group in the chat window.

Once all ten images were chosen, we looked over them together to make sure that we had
chosen a range of artworks from different artists from around the world. We also made sure to
choose only those artworks that were created and shared by children under the age of seven years
old. We discussed together that we would work separately to analyze the two pieces we had
each chosen. Our task was to examine each of the images and share what we could identify in
relation to the elements of art (Lines, Shape, Texture, Space, Form, Value and Color).

Shannon offered to put together the first phase of our slide presentation. She shared with
us her personal email address and then once everyone was finished their own analysis, they
emailed their findings to Shannon. We arranged for a follow-up Teams meeting for the coming
Thursday and all finings were to be received by Shannon by Wednesday at the latest.

My first chosen image was “Horses” located on page 75 of the art gallery. It was created
by Ana C, age five using the medium of pastels. Ana’s location was listed as, Tbilisi, Republic
of Georgia. The second image I chose was “Flowers” located on page 88 of the art gallery. This
colorful flower image was created by a four-year-old named, Mackenzie J. Mackenzie is located
somewhere unspecified within the USA and used the watercolor medium to create this image.

I created my own two slides using the instructions to re-size them to fit the required
8.5”x11” page size for turning into the digital book. I have attached my two pages to this
document to show my personal analysis of each of my chosen images. As I was reviewing
question four on our assignment steps, I decided to raise the question with Shannon about the
second half of the presented question, Look for patterns and themes that emerge across the
artwork and individual differences in each child’s creative expression. Shannon and I emailed
back and forth and agreed that this part of the question should be completed collectively when
we are summarizing our findings, so I made note to bring it up during our Thursday Teams
meeting.

Shannon was unable to join our Teams meeting but once she had put all our information
together into the first slide show she emailed it to Vy so that we could work on the rest of it live
during our session. Madison also got called away to another appointment but verified with Vy
that she would email her conclusion and recommendations to be added on later. Vy had
volunteered to do the last step of entering our conclusions and recommendations during the
meeting and then convert it into a flip book using the online instruction for Heyzine (n.d.).
 When we reviewed the PowerPoint that Shannon had put together, I could see that not all
my information that I has shared during my analysis was included. I can understand that
Shannon wanted to make sure that the information added appeared more even for each image
and she also wanted to keep the same size font for each slide. In the end my image analysis was
split over two pages each, which I think made it a little hard to follow and still at the same time
was missing some of my information. I decided that because it was a group work assignment, I
would not put too much concern into it. I did however see the pages that Josie too had created
herself before hand. They were also more elaborate and were changed out like mine! Maybe this
will be a common challenge for each of us who emailed our individual slides in.

There was three of us present for most of our final Teams meeting, Myself, Josie and Vy.
Madison messaged in before she left and shared her thoughts on the common theme and
techniques used across our chosen artworks. My shared findings were “I can see lots of real-life
depictions of the images colored in each picture we chose to examine. Many bright colors were
used. A variety of primary and secondary colors. I can see elements of storytelling in each photo
and could make up my own story to go with each image. There is a common theme of bright
colors and animals/nature or creativity (land of hearts/ballet dancer). All images look happy and
that the children would have been drawing off their interests”.

In relation to our chosen research question my shared opinion was “The role of
imagination and fantasy in the artwork of young children – letting children use their own creative
imagination during artwork helps them express their emotions better and helps them to learn how
to think outside the box with their ideas as they test them out using different art materials and
mediums. Using imagination creates endless possibilities and fantasy and imagination hep build
creativity”. We discussed our chosen future recommendations and Vy just typed it in to the
document as we spoke. Josie shared a digital image of a quote by Albert Einstein, and we
decided to use it as our closing page. When we signed off from our meeting, Vy was just
waiting to update the final responses from Shannon and Madison before creating the flipbook.

After the flipbook was created, Vy shared with us the viewing link:
https://heyzine.com/flip-book/c33bb47f56.html in our group chat. I have also attached the final
PDF. I feel like I contributed an equal amount to this assignment and to our group work.
Although I did not create either of the documents, I put in the required amount of research time
for my chosen art pieces, and I shared an equal amount of personal feedback to be included
during our group chats and online meetings. My only challenge was that I felt a little sad about
my work being abbreviated but overall, it wasn’t that bad, and the girls were a great team to
work with. I am glad that we were given this opportunity to collaborate with our other peers and
share during this assignment.
 References

C, A. (n.d.). Page 75 - Global Children’s Art Gallery [Pastel]. In www.naturalchild.org.

https://www.naturalchild.org/gallery/pages/75.html “Horses” Age 5

Global Children’s Art Gallery. (n.d.). Www.naturalchild.org.

https://www.naturalchild.org/gallery/

Heyzine. (n.d.). PDF To Flipbook | Flipbook Online. Heyzine. https://heyzine.com

J, M. (n.d.). Page 88 - Global Children’s Art Gallery [Watercolor]. In www.naturalchild.org.

https://www.naturalchild.org/gallery/pages/75.html “Flowers” Age 4