Maybe it’s just my recent preoccupation with my prompt challenges, but I’m now regularly noticing and hearing about other such assignments. Today the NY Times reviewed a book compiled by the art magazine Paper Monument called Draw it with your eyes closed: the art of the art assignment that says the book “is a collection of art teacher folk wisdom — the best classroom assignments that the contributors, most of them artists or art teachers, have given or received or even heard of.”
A few example assignments:
Take an 18 x 24 inch piece of paper and make a drawing using nothing but your car.
Design a monstrance.
Make a paper doll of yourself.
Redesign a rainbow.
Apparently most of the assignments are pretty ambiguous, although in a blog post about the book, Dwight Garner mentions this one from the artist Helen Mirra:
Make an autobiography with books from the library. Using the Library of Congress classification system, choose books with call letters which are part of your name. Photocopy the stack of books, showing the full spines, so your name reads across the bottom of the page of the photocopy. If needed, scale the image to fit on a single sheet of paper. The titles of the books form the autobiography.