Gestural Figure Drawing

This week, 3rd grade learned how to draw their classmates using loose spirals which is taught in high school and college! It was very fascinating to observe how each student has a unique line drawing style. It was also beautiful to know that young people are so incredibly capable of much more advanced approaches to drawing from observation.

Contour Shoes

4th graders warmed up for this project with a blind contour exercise - no looking! This exercise forces your eye to look even closer when drawing from observation because you cannot see your paper!  

California Missions

4th Grade learns and reviews watercolor techniques to mix different values of brown to render these beautifully drawn and painted Missions 3-Dimensionally!

Contour Seashells

3rd grade's contour was fun because everyone loves seashells.

Fall Contour Leaves #2

My Special Day class did a great job looking at the contours of Fall leaves I brought for them for a contour lesson.

Fall Contour Leaves

I brought my class some Maple leaves, I found on a hike. I brought a variety of sizes and colors, greens to yellows to browns to show them how leaves are affected by season change and the position of the earth, relative to the sun.

Lighthouses

Did you know the very first lighthouse was built in Alexandria, Egypt? It was called the Pharos of Alexandria and it was the tallest building in our history. At the top of this structure, a lantern with a giant bonfire whose light may have been focused by mirrors, perhaps made of polished bronze, radiated light about 300 miles out into the sea. It took 300 Slaves to build this lighthouse, and 17 years of labor. Sadly, it was completely destroyed in an earthquake.

Contour Shoes!

Take off your shoe...(laughter, giggling, smelly feet)...put it on the table. Have your partner cover your paper so you cannot look...and draw a Blind Contour of your shoe for 5 minutes. This is how we started this lesson - to see how doing a Blind Contour actually forces your eye to look harder at the lines you are following with your eye, because you cannot see them as you draw them.

Van Gogh Starry Night Contour

Impressionism is not only an important Art Movement to learn about, it introduces a new way of perception. Rendering impressionistic style loosens the artist into breaking up those intimidating, solid, defining lines. Sometimes students will focus on how their drawing is, "bad" because the basic contours are wrong, and it doesn't resemble what they are trying to illustrate. The student becomes frustrated and discouraged. This is why I chose to do Van Gogh's Starry Night.