more figure drawing.

my 9th graders continue to blow me away. we did some gesture drawings of each other this morning. they loved posing for each other and coming up with wacky positions. even the kids who have been struggling with drawing seemed comfortable with the scribbling as a way of finding proportion and weight.

we're going to do a project about people that requires them to work more from their imagination in a few weeks so this is the prep for that.

mapping the still life

it is so important to 9th graders to make drawings that are super realistic but they are rarely willing to put in the amount of energy needed into actually observing what's in front of them. so...i try to develop ways to trick them into doing more observing than drawing in the hopes that they will build these habits before it matters too much.

in this exercise i set up a still life and then ask them to create a representation of the set up on paper without actually drawing any of the objects. it should be detailed enough so that someone could gather all the supplies they would need and then re-build it in another location at another time.

i did this for the first time when i was teaching basic drawing at the university of iowa and i can't even remember if it was my idea or if it's one i stole from someone else. the iowa kids came up with all kinds of crazy solutions to the problem. my 9th graders are often less inventive but this year's crew did some interesting things. and they learn what they're supposed to whether or not the work they make is all that visually interesting.

focusing on focusing.

on mondays my advanced 2d class draws from observation. for the first half of the term i focused on increasing their understanding of what it takes to build a drawing...working in layers, being flexible, working from the general to the specific. they seemed to get it but they haven't been observing as closely as i wanted them to.

they're the group on "the plan" after all and they tend to get silly when we work from observation. so today i decided i would provide some of the structure and they would provide the rest. they would draw tiny pine cones. i hoped the size would help them to get involved and obsessed...

i also told them they couldn't sit within 10 feet of anyone else and they had to work in silence. i recommended headphones. they got to choose large or tiny paper and the materials they wanted to work with. i advised them to think about their natural tendencies...to work small and detailed or big and sweeping and to choose wisely.

and...they did it. they worked in silence, away from each other. they spent 50 minutes observing intensely. and most of them made the best drawings i've ever seen them make.

they need that internal focus to make accurate drawings. so what is it? is it sitting instead of standing? is it working without and audience? is it the tiny objects combined with the teenage brain?

or was it me?

i sat away from them and worked on my computer while they worked, making one or two quick laps around the room. i rarely allow myself to do this. rather, i circle around like a mother hen while they draw making mental notes of who's having trouble with what and yelling out suggestions to the class. maybe they were just as relieved as i was to have some quiet for once?

this makes me think it could be interesting to have a class like this work on one tiny drawing all term long next year....

the changing still life.

this morning i did one of my favorite drawing projects with my 9th graders. i can't remember anymore which projects i invented and which i didn't...but i started using this exercise to fight the number one battle i have when teaching teenagers to draw...their inability to be flexible. they insist on getting it right on the first try or they give up. they get extremely aggravated when they realize their drawing is out of proportion and something big has to be moved...god forbid. and they do not like eraser marks or any other kind of stray marks on their work. all of this cracks me up as they want adults to move deadlines and leave their stuff all over the place but that's beside the point.

here's what i do...i set up two simple objects on a table and i tell them to make the best drawing they can of what they see using line and value. after about 15 minutes i add an object. they adjust their drawing appropriately, erasing and re-drawing as needed. i continue to add objects to the still life every 3 minutes or so until the table is full and their groans reach a certain level of drama. then...i start taking objects away every 3 minutes or so. this positively drives them over the edge. i usually leave one object on the table but i move it to a different spot. their drawings show the history of the process which i love, love, love...and they hate.

the most important part of the whole activity is the conversation we have afterward about what was frustrating about the process of making the drawing. i talk to them about how the physical activity that happened during this exercise should be happening during every drawing even when i'm not messing with the still life.

this is an exercise that several students have told me (much after the fact) really changed their thinking about what making a drawing is all about. they admitted to hating the activity, and maybe even me a little bit at the time we did it, but were thankful later on.

drawing on each others drawings.

oh boy, did they hate doing this...i set up a fairly complicated still life and asked them to draw it as best they could using charcoal. after about 20 minutes i asked them to rotate 5 spots to their right, to someone else's drawing. they were to correct what they saw in front of them, erase and re-draw as they thought was necessary. some students arrived at a drawing that was better than theirs and some arrived at drawings that needed a lot of work. i had them work on an additional two drawings before returning to their own to see what had become of it.

we had a discussion about what you see when you look at someone else's drawing...how it's easier to see the mistakes and why. we talked about flexibility and how in order to make accurate drawings you need to be willing to adjust, eliminate, add, and look very closely.

blurry slide drawing.

this activity isn't mine. i can't remember where i read about it or did it myself but i think it's pure magic. i find a picture usually one with people and text and project it upside down at the front of the room using the lens of the projector to make it as blurry as possible. i give the kids charcoal, paper towels, and erasers, and tell them to draw exactly what they see...no more, no less. after about 20 minutes i focus the lens a little bit, lecturing them all the time that they need to keep up with what's on the screen. i continue to focus every few minutes until in the end the picture is totally in focus and the drawings are finished.

it works like magic every time. the students who have diligently drawn from observation as the picture adjust have perfect drawings. many make their best drawing to date on this day. and the smart asses who think they know what it is and try to outsmart the project end up with a word spelled wrong or a figure out of place.

following the drawing we have a discussion about the process of doing this...about building a drawing (which i say all the time but they usually understand during this activity) from the general to the specific.

talk and draw.

this is not an orginal idea...but one of my favorites, especially for 9th graders. i pair them up and one person gets to look at the still life while the other draws. the person looking at the still life's job is to describe what they see to the drawer, but they are not allowed to use the name of any of the objects. they are also not allowed to point to the paper the drawer is working on or gesture in any way. the goal is for the drawer to make an accurate drawing of the still life.

my students love, love, love to talk so it always cracks me up when they gave so much trouble doing this...and they do. after they finish we have a discussion about what it took to complete the task and what they would do differently if they had to do it again. and year after year they say the same thing. they would have started by calmly giving an overview of the set up so the drawer had a rough idea of what they were doing. then they would have described the shapes in more detail in an organized way, either from top to bottom, or from left to right.

i try to drive home the idea that the level of effort it took to observe, analyze, and describe, is the level of effort they should be putting into every drawing if they want it to be accurate and dynamic.

drawing the face.

this monday i had my drawing and painting students studying facial features. they've been learning to draw the figure for the past two weeks and i thought this was the logical next step. my goal when teaching students in 9th and 10th grade is to give them the skills they need to tell visual stories about their lives and without faces a teenager just can't do that. their lives are all about faces (and bodies i guess).

i find that teenagers often draw the face as if the features were stickers, flat and with no relationship to the actual face, so i decided to have them do each feature separately in their sketchbook. we talked in depth about the structure of each element of the face so they would better understand why the eye is shaped like it is....flaps of skin wrapped around the sphere of the eyeball, or pieces of cartilage sticking out from the cheek. i don't think they really think about that stuff. they're so concerned with the way people look they don't even think about why things are the way they are on the face.

i don't have my students do traditional self-portrait in any of my classes. i know this unusual. self-portraits are usually the center of the high-school art curriculum. some students choose to do them as an answer to some of the assignments i give but i don't ever require it. i'm not convinced that teenagers are objectively capable of looking at themselves in the mirror and recording what they look like...and i don't feel terribly inclined to push them to do so. isn't it more important to give them the skills of observation and drawing that will enable them to do so when they're emotionally ready? i prefer to spend class time challenging the way they see themselves as individuals in the world by asking them to create symbolic self-portraits or family portraits.

figure drawing.

today i had my 10th graders draw each other. this is always hilarious because they get embarrassed and/or love to show off. it went pretty well with this group.

as a group, they have a very hard time seeing the big picture when they draw. they have a tendency to focus on the little things and then when they step back to evaluate their work they realize the proportions or color is off.

so i started them out by telling them they could only use 3 lines to capture the spirit of the pose. then i asked them to draw a shape for a box we could put the model in. finally, we did some loose gesture drawings and i'm pretty sure the preliminary exercises helped. next week we'll focus on proportions.

seeing not the objects.

as a drawing exercise for my 10th graders i set up all these objects and...

had them observe closely while painting the negative space between and around the objects with ink. this was very very hard for them. it forced them to work slowly which i thought was great. they are beginning to understand how closely they must observe to be able to represent things accurately.

trying to give them what they need

my drawing students have been struggling with proportion. they have so much trouble seeing the relationships between objects. when i point out the comparisons to them they see it but they have trouble seeing the big picture. it's like they can only focus on one small part at a time. the big problem with this is that when they spend hours on their drawing and only later realize that they have to change something from back at the beginning they get frustrated to the point of giving up.

so i decided to spend another monday on this. in addition, i built a still life that i thought would allow them to put all their energies into the subject of proportion. i built something relatively flat and with objects of widely varying sizes. i intentionally put more than one of the same object but not in the same place so they could use it as a measuring tool. i overlapped things carefully using things like the tambourine as a target.

we reviewed using the pencil as a measuring tool and i told them to go ahead and write their realizations right on the paper they were drawing on. this seemed to help them. many of them started to get the idea of seeing the whole and then the parts. my hope is that they'll now be able to apply what they've learned to lager more involved projects.

another monday...

as i prepared monday's drop everything and draw lesson i was thinking about the inside/outside project we will be starting at the end of the week. this group has had a lot of trouble with seeing things as they actually are so i anticipate they will struggle with the perspective of the architectural element of that project.

i thought to myself...how can i teach them some of the rules of perspective without actually teaching them the rules of perspective. i have always felt dishonest when teaching students "rules" in art, like the rules of perspective in drawing, or the rule of 3rd's in composition. i prefer to have them observe closely, describe what they see or what they think is most interesting...figure out why, and work from there. they struggle more without the "rules" but in the end i think they retain the concept more by seeing and doing.

so i set out these two long tables and put on it scraps of foamcore and wooden blocks. it started to look like a city or a map so i continued to arrange it that way. i asked them to use only lines to draw what they saw. i did teach them to use their pencils as a measuring tool so they could get the proportions right.

doing lessons like this always makes me want to go back to school to study how the brain works. it amazes me how the brain tricks you into seeing things differently than they are. students will argue and argue with me about the angles of the lines or how long the table is. they kept saying but the table is a long rectangle, how could it be that my measurements tell me it's as wide as it is long. it's so hard to get them to see that we're creating an illusion, not a map.

then at some point they have this a-ha moment and then they get it from then on out. i see in their faces the sense of accomplishment. i didn't get it. now i do. you didn't tell me. i found it on my own. it was a huge struggle for all but two of my students.

you can see some of the struggles in the drawing on the right.

line wrap-up or how unprepared i was on monday.

ok here's the truth. sometimes it's hard to force myself to plan on the weekend. i knew i needed to do something that would wrap up our work with line for monday but i was at a loss. i thought about how it had ended last week. they had gotten the idea of varying the line but they still weren't observing as closely as i would have liked so...i thought sharpies could be the answer to that. no erasing. no hesitating. fit it all on the paper or start again. see the whole thing. but what would we draw? another irrelevant still life? what has lots of lines and details? 1 hour till class. 1/2 hour till class. 10 minutes till class.

i had them all take their shoes off. they loved this...which shocked me.

i laid two pieces of newsprint on the fool in an x and we placed our shoes side by side. a little perspective preview for next week.

and to my surprise it was silent as they slowly and intentionally observed and moved along the line of shoes with their sharpies. they wore out at just the right time with 5 minutes to go.

i can never get enough of kids sharpie line drawings. what is it about them? they always hate how they turn out and no matter how many ways i try to explain how honest the drawings are and how much evidence i can see as to how closely they were observing they just never believe.