An educator with a serious interest in incorporating critical thinking into a school curriculum might feel the need to be an expert in critical thinking simply to evaluate the many existing approaches which bear that name. Furthermore, this problem would seem to be compounded if critical thinking and the creation of art were asserted to be intimately related to one another--so intimate that doing the latter incorporates essential dimensions of the former. But these initial reservations, although noteworthy, need not deflect inquiry into the possibility of juxtaposing artistic creation and critical thinking in a high-school curriculum. This article describes an approach to curricular arts-integration which, when viewed from a certain perspective, concurrently accomplishes three important educational ends. It offers the 4-step model of critical thinking as a position that, both in scope and detail, can stand against other competing and divergent models. This approach is especially relevant for the types of thinking found in the humanities, but its principles are sufficiently expansive to accommodate adaptation to other disciplines as well. The authors outline the method of critical thinking and analyze an example of arts education that will illustrate the power of the principles in a practical way.