Term 3 session 6

Time to learn about shadow and light.
Most objects are make from a variation of geometric shapes. Sphere, cylinder, cube, rectangular prism (cuboid) and triangular prism. To understand where light falls on a shape and how it creates a shadow will help create a three dimensional effect when drawing and painting.
Language to use when describing tonal change (also known as value).
Light tone - whisper
mid tone - talking
dark tone - shouting

I demonstrate with a large ball, we observe where the light comes from and the shadows that are formed on and below the ball. When drawing a cylinder we use the same process of observing light and shadow on a tin can.

We started by drawing a circle with charcoal. Charcoal is an excellent medium for making shadows and tonal changes, it is soft and easily smudged.
After drawing the dark (shouting) shadow at the bottom of the circle, use your finger to smudge in the mid tone (talking). The light is a circle at the top to the larger circle on the side the light source is coming from. An eraser can be used to remove the charcoal. It is easy to use mid tone and rub back to light. Rub or smudge the charcoal in the curved direction of the sphere. If you smudge straight across it will flatten the 3D effect.
After the ball is complete add a table to sit the ball on and a background to give it a location.

This learning will continue until we have experienced all shapes.

Next on the agenda:
Sketching using a slit or very narrow viewfinder (can’t think of another name to call it). By using the slit viewfinder the children only draw part of an object. They use the viewfinder as a grid (middle horizontal, middle vertical, high and low horizontal lines and vertical left and right line). By using the grid the image will fill the whole page.
It took a little whole for the children to understand they had to use the viewfinder as a grid, but once they had the sketching became easier for them and the images became realistic. They also had problems with only drawing part of an object after being so used to drawing whole objects.
These sketches will become the base of a larger composition.

In the afternoon we continued to work on the collaborative murals. These are coming on and the children are becoming more confident about their work. They need to be reminded to look at the techniques their artist has used.