Creating Artist Trading Cards was part of the arts integrated unit with Ms. Nestle, the Willow Creek Language Arts specialist, and her 7th grade artists.
This unit was connected to the book Dragonwings, by Laurence Yep.
The essential question that the students were focused on was, “What are the many different ways people communicate?”
Each student was asked to create 4 trading cards (but they had to create 2 of each so that they could be traded).
Materials were simple: Black paper on white trading cards. Some artists chose to embellish their cards with watercolor pencils.
The symbols (that were cut out of black paper) had to represent the artist, and communicate ideas about them to others when shown or traded.
The cards were then laminated, shared, traded, and used as an artistic resource for creating their kites.
An old friend and colleague of mine, Benicia Hill, who presently works as the Middle School Arts Specialist at The Berkeley School, did an Artist Trading Card project with her students.
Here is the link:
http://msarttbs.blogspot.com/p/artist-trading-card-contest-2010.html