Draw on That—Day Three From out of the Darkness

For our “Draw on That” class today, it was also time for a change. Charcoal, shadows and shading to create a 3-D face on a ball. Like my younger class this morning, we worked on shading a ball and creating a face.

This project was great for understanding new tools like charcoal and to understand the basics of creating three-dimensional images.

For these older students, we also tried some more advance techniques. First we created a smudgy field of grey on our paper by smudging charcoal with tissue across our paper. We then drew our circle and worked on pulling our ball faces out of the grey darkness by using our kneaded erasers. The highlights in the work below were all created with erasers with darker charcoal used to create the more intense shadows and shading.

And just for fun, the cucumber version! :-)

Draw on This—Day Three Charcoal Shadows

Now that we have explored markers, blocking in and some simple contours it's time for something different. This morning we changed things up a bit. This morning we tried CHARCOAL. With these young little ones, charcoal is lots of fun but also extra messy. By the end of class, there was not a one student who had probably not smudged their clothes or faces with some mark of the black stuff.

The great thing about charcoal is the smooth lines that it makes on paper, how it can be smudged into soft shapes and gradients and that it can be erased (to a degree) with fun kneaded erasers! After a quick duplication drawing warm up and playing with our charcoal to get a bit of a feel for it, we began our lesson.

Today we learned about shading—shading a ball in particular.  Step by step, I took my students through the idea of drawing a circle and how to apply a shadow to one side of it. We also looked at how to add a shadow beside our ball—the shadow that the ball would cast upon the table that it would be sitting on. Playing with erasers, blending stumps and simple facial tissue, we practiced smudging our charcoal to create soft shadows.

After our basic ball, we added some fun—we added similar balls to our drawing to create a fun face. Here is my sample:

Below is the lovely work by the students today. Some even included a sun to show a light source that would cause our little ball heads to have such shadows!

This and That—Day Three The Final Colours

Tonight our little class worked on the last step to finish our bugs in complementary colours. As we saw our bright bugs pop out from their dark backgrounds, it was interesting to see the different techniques used by different students to create shading. I saw simple hatching, cross-hatching and curved hatching. This project was great for learning about:

• complimentary colour
• working with oil pastel and crayon
• drawing inverted images
• looking shadows and highlights
• using different techniques to create shadows

The final product created lovely triads as seen below—

The drawing above is my own. As some of the students were not able to finish their final drawing in class, I have no new photos of student work. Hopefully next week, I can show you the great results!

As a precursor to our next class, we also discussed using grids to create drawings. Our next project will start with this technique.

I have to recommend, once again, Art for Kids: Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted as this book provided me with stellar examples of how to used grids to not only copy an image but how to create a distorted version of images. Check it out... pages 55 and 56. I rather wish they had not titled this book "for kids" cause it is truly beautiful and so useful for aspiring artists of all ages. Way to go author Kathryn Temple!

Draw on That—Day Two: Different Ducks, Different Dogs

Day two of the new "Draw on That" class and we are having a great time! Like my younger class, we started with a quick duplication drawing exercise to warm up then on to our challenge.

The students were asked to use the techniques last weeks to draw some new things. We started with the duck candle. Again, here is my drawing example that I first showed to the students—

Together we blocked in the basic shapes with our light coloured markers. After the light colours, we went over our drawing with darker colours to show the lines we wanted to keep and to add some detail.

These more advanced students were also challenged to look at the shadows in the duck and to see if they could add them with their markers. Check it out!—

Next came the dog challenge. We followed the process again by breaking down each drawing into basic shapes then outlining with darker markers later. Here again is my initial example to show the students—

Below is the work by our students. There is a lovely level of detail and I am impressed by the willingness for some students to experiment with different techniques.

This lovely last example is a fun and creative rendering by my new assistant. Love that fur and shading!

Draw on This—Day Two: Ducks and Dogs

Day two and today I had my first full class of THIRTEEN students! I also am ever so grateful to now have a young volunteer assistant join our class. This is wonderful as this large class requires much setup and clean up.

Today we started with some fun duplication exercise warm-ups. Each student received two pieces of paper with some simple illustrations of lines all curved and straight, circles and dots. Using markers, each student tried to draw a copy of each of the little drawings below each picture. Muscles and brains warmed up quickly and we were ready to dive in.

Today we used techniques similar to those used for our koala of last week to draw a duck. My actual original reference was a duck candle so this duck included a wick coming out of his head. :-) Here was my drawing example that I first showed to the students—

Together we blocked in the basic shapes with our light coloured markers. After the light colours, we went over our drawing with darker colours to show the lines we wanted to keep and to add some detail. I love the creative detail that these kids tend to add to their drawings. Check it out!—

Once our ducks were complete, we move on to a second challenge—the head of a dog. The process again here was to break down a drawing into basic shapes then to outline and add details with darker markers later. Here was my initial example to show the students—

Below is the fabulous work by our students. I see lots of great shapes and good proportions!—