The Power of Color, Part Deux

This week we continued with the Power of Color lesson. Last week, students were able to explore the acrylic paint medium and practice mixing it with glaze to create transparencies. This week the students started painting the boards that they gesso-ed last week. They were instructed to include 3-5 printed images in their piece by painting under and over it with glaze and paint to get it to stick. The objective of the project is to have them change the meaning or the connotation of the combination of images by changing their colors. We encouraged the students to choose images that "went together" or would have meaning when juxtaposed. We also encouraged the students to really incorporate the images into the painting so that maybe you couldn't tell what was painted and what was printed; however, not many students actually did this. Many were hesitant to do more than the background and the application of the images. Perhaps we could have pulled more out of the students if we had more time in class for them to work-- they would have needed more time to plan out their painting before starting to paint.
One thing that challenged us this week was that one student refused to include any images in his painting. He painted an interesting background in which he explored many different textures and colors--which he later articulated to me-- however, he did not actually do the project we set forth for him. So, in a school art class setting, how would we determine his grade? On one hand, we encourage creativity and innovation and this is what he did: he explored the medium we gave him in his own way and I think he learned a lot about it in the process. On the other hand, if you give this student an "A" --even though he didn't actually do the project-- you can't rightfully give another student who followed the directions a bad grade... can you?
I'm glad we're facing dilemmas like this now because I think it'll help us figure out our teaching philosophy and we'll be more prepared to deal with something like this in a real classroom setting. But as of right now, I don't know how I'd handle that in my school classroom yet.

[Pictures to come.]