Try It On: Cracking the Code of Style
🎯 Today's mission briefing
We are learning that style is a pattern of repeated choices — not luck and not talent-magic — by spotting the pattern in recognisable Australian artists, trying their styles on in our own making, and starting the hunt for the choices that keep showing up in OUR work.
You'll know you've got it when:
- I can explain style as a pattern of repeated choices (colour, line, shape, sound, movement, words) and back it up with a real Australian artist's pattern
- I can 'try on' two different styles on the same subject and name exactly which choices I borrowed from each
- I can find at least two choices that keep showing up in my own work — the first entries in my style file
Ninety seconds, no rules — then the no-signature quiz
Connects to what your guest already knows and makes them curious. Activating prior knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of new learning.
Making first, talking second — that's this whole unit, so grab a pencil and paper RIGHT NOW. Ninety seconds on the clock: draw the place where you sleep. No rules, no rubbing out, no 'I can't draw' (this isn't a drawing test, it's a fingerprint collection). Done? Put it face-down; you'll need it later, and it knows things about you that you don't know yet. Now the quiz. No names, no signatures, just descriptions — see how many you can identify. One: a cartoon family of dogs in soft blues and oranges, simple friendly shapes, backyard games that make the grown-ups laugh hardest. Two: a painting of an outlaw as a flat black rectangle of a helmet with a slot for eyes, riding through bare gold country. Three: a song that tells a whole family story in plain, ordinary Australian words — making gravy, missing someone at Christmas. If you guessed Bluey, Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly paintings and a Paul Kelly song — or even got close — ask yourself the only question that matters today: HOW did you know, with no name attached? Something in the work itself did the signing. Today we find out what.