Finished still life sketches

The students worked hard for most of the day finishing the sketches.
We talked about how dark lines highlighted depth and shadows. And how dark shading makes the foreground more prominent.

As the students saw their artwork taking shape and looking good they really concentrated on getting the shapes and angles right. The work we have done on perspective became a tool they used to get the weaving look like it was going around the flower or basket and shells on the right angle. The classroom was very quiet for most of the day as the students became absorbed in their work.

Next teaching strategy will be in increasing the variation of sketching techniques.
By regularly doing observational sketching, either long enough to finish a sketch or a series of quick sketches, the students are looking more closely at the relationship between objects, shadows and light. They are wanting to make the objects look 3 dimensional.

The standard of these finished sketches have far exceeded my expectations.

Final sketches

Building up the student’s observation and sketching skills is beginning to show results.
Today they had to put together still life displays and beginning sketching on A3 paper. This pencil sketch will be their ‘good’ piece of artwork. The focus for this first session was to fill the page with the shapes of the objects using whisper lines (no erasers), then go over the permanent lines with talking lines. Some started to put in shadows.

The photos are NOT the finished artworks, they are a work in progress.

To get the results I ask the students questions about their work. They have to tell me how they can improve and what part needs work to make it stand out. The work they submit first is never the finished product; they always have to improve it, often going back many times (perseverance in the making).
I know it sounds harsh, but these students are now carefully looking at their work and not rushing to be finished first or thinking 'that’s good enough'. They want to make it better than their best.


The next session will focus on shadow and light, light lines and dark lines.

Collaborative art work

This week we looked at a range of old photos. We joined a number of A1 pieces of paper on the wall and all chose a spot to draw an image from the photos. After 10 minutes the students had to change places and take over someone else's drawing. This change over happened a few times before the drawing was complete.
The reason for working on other peoples drawings was to take the idea of ownership of one image and develop the idea of ownership for the whole art work. After the first change over the students became comfortable with working on many images. Initially they were precious about the image they started, thinking "they will stuff it up, they don't know what I am doing."
In the end they were all looking and improving parts of the artwork.

They uses black crayon, starting by using whisper lines (very light lines). Then when the paper was full of images they went over the lines with shouting lines (very heavy lines). White crayon was used to blank in areas they wanted to be white.

We discussed the colour of old photos and decided to colour the art work with a range of brown tones in dye.

The students were amazed at how much they completed in one day.
Over hearing a conversation between two students, "Wow, I didn't know I could draw like that."

The art work continues...