One of the most important skills students can learn as they advance in their artistic skills is how to draw accurately from life. In high school, students may have been used to drawing from photographic reference or working from imagination with no visual reference at all. However, drawing from life is a way to learn and practice skills such as perspective, draftsmanship and measuring.
Depending on the resources available, consider hiring live models for your students to draw. You can also create a still life from various objects or take students outdoors to draw from nature. Any of these scenarios will provide an opportunity to address students' weaknesses in a number of areas.
Working outdoors, have students draw landscapes that include the sky and attempt to convey various atmospheric effects. You can also require students to produce a series of images drawn in the same location at different times of day to show how the qualities of light affect shadow, color, contrast and mood.
Add elements of art history or art appreciation in an art production class. Some schools require students to study art history and art production simultaneously, while others may allow students to focus entirely on making art. In either case, you can introduce notable artists to the class by showing examples of work and analyzing how certain artists use techniques that the students are learning.
Ask students to create work in the style of a specific artist. Have them submit a biographical essay or list of important works by the artist, and then produce a work in that artist's style using the artist's preferred medium. This will force them to exercise critical viewing and to modify their own styles to add elements that are present in the artist's body of work.
Give students the chance to work in diverse media, so they do not focus on only one kind of art. Even a drawing class can be set up to ask students to work in charcoal, pencil, colored pencil, conte and ink. Painting and sculpture classes have even more latitude.
Assign projects that require students to use two, three or more media in a single image, or ask them to experiment in a medium that they have never used before. Adding three-dimensional media like clay, found objects or folded paper to a traditional flat drawing can get students to start thinking of their work in new ways.
Another project about media could involve requiring students to produce artists' statements that explain their choice of media for a given project. By defending one medium over another, students will have to consider the pros and cons of working in each available medium.
Motivate students to complete work and meet deadlines by mounting a class show. This can be as simple as hanging student work in the hallway outside the classroom, or may involve reserving a space on- or off-campus to show the work in a more formal setting.
Ask each student to submit work that centers around a single statement or idea that is of personal interest, or ask the students to select a class theme and produce new work to demonstrate a semester's worth of growth while incorporating the shared theme.