This week, I set up a lesson using a painting by terrific artist, Carol Marine (See her work at the link here) Carol's work is strong and very accessible to my middle-school students. I chose this painting by Carol for its color scheme, whimsy, and cropped subject matter. The students needed to make a thumbnail sketch, then paint it in watercolor, using no black nor brown. On a couple of the paint sets, I had to use "caution tape" to cover the black and brown just in case they "forgot." We talked about black, brown, tan, gray, etc, and how they need to make those tones using complements after naming the black, brown, tan, gray, etc, by using one of the primary or secondary colors as adjective. "Green gray", "orange brown", "reddish tan". They got the hang of it. We'll finish this week.
Thanks for looking!
Sometimes my students at South Shore Charter Public School can be self-conscious about drawing, and feel intimidated around their peers or when facing challenging subject. Today I introduced them to "drawing aerobics", an exercise I came up with a few years ago to break the ice, break the surface tension, get their juices flowing. I added a couple of suspenseful twists today, and got great results. This exercise works with adults and child students alike.
As they arrived in class, I told them to get their sketch books and to make 4 rectangles on each of three pages, all different shapes and sizes. As they did so, I placed 5" x 8" pieces of card stock on the tables in front of each student and then doled out a variety of objects onto the card stock; mini-still life setups. There was a piggy bank, a jar with dice in it, binder clips, a cream pitcher, some building blocks, a ceramic chicken, jar with brushes in it, a miniature trophy, etc.
I explained to the students that I would roll a die, which would tell how many minutes they would draw, (maximum time allotted was 3 minutes) then we drew a card from a deck. If it was black, they could draw anyway they wanted. If it was red, they needed to crop the drawing. Then.. drum roll, if they pulled a face card, it would be a no eraser round! They gasped.
We had a ball, and they took risks, pushed themselves, and realized that 3 minutes is a long, long time when you are drawing the essence, the essentials of the object in front of you. They cropped their images in very interesting ways, excitement! We had a lot of laughs. I had a large stopwatch running on my smartboard, some music in the background, and they happily rotated after every round.
Everyone left happy, and successful, and feeling pretty accomplished... a good day.
