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!