Term 3 session 7

Our warm-up today involved drawing a bird with indian ink and a stick. This task lead into the days main activity; mixed media birds on the texture canvas paper we prepared last week.
The process:

1. Draw a bird with pencil onto the prepared textured paper. Add a simple background (ground, branch leaves according to habitat).

2. Using white pastel carefully colour in the bird and background feature. (This needs to be quite thick)
3. Chose a paint colour (habitat dependent) and paint all the paper except the bird - leave it white. (One child painted over the bird and it did not look as effective as the others.)
The paint needs to be watered down to the consistency of liquid dye. I did not use dye because it would seep into the grooves and the feature of the painted paper was some of the grooves (texture) stayed white.

4. Paint around the bird and the background features with thicker paint of the same colour, adding the darker tone.

5. Lastly, go around the outline of the bird with indian ink. I was not going to do this final stage, but after completing the birds, they needed something to make the bird stand out more.

I demonstrated the process and the children became the artists and created their own composition. They were amazed at their creations.

Term 3 session 6

The collaborative art, Green Eggs and Ham, has been finished (much to my delight). I now have the problem of displaying it.

Todays warm-up was drawing the negative shape around bird drawings using indian ink and a stick. This medium gives different dynamics to the effect it gives in the drawings and children gain more confidence when they know they can not rub out. They tend to take more risks when applying the lines.
One thing to watch our for is if the children tap their stick on the side of the ink container after dipping, it tends to flick and can go onto other peoples work and everything else close by. (Paint shirts are a must).

Last but not least, we prepared our canvas for next week. The canvas paper has been covered with tissue paper and watery PVA glue. This creates a lovely textured base for our painting because it dries very hard. To be continued...

Term 3 session 5

To encourage the children to use the right side of their brain I introduced a hard concept for 5 and 6 year olds to do, but to my delight most of the children in this group gave it a go. The concept: drawing the negative space around an object. I explained to them that the air is around an object hence being the negative space/shape and the object is the positive shape. To help them understand I hold black paper behind an object then demonstrate drawing the shape where the air touches the object. The negative space is coloured black. It is amazing how the children look at the shape far more closely than when drawing the positive shape (object). Negative shapes are interesting in themselves and hopefully this knowledge/skill will help children look beyond the obvious. (It’s a good theory anyway). Of course more practice is needed to strengthen this knowledge.

We have nearly completed the Green Eggs and Ham illustrations. The children are very proud of themselves and are engaging in true collaborative artwork by working on each others pictures, helping and working along side others to complete the work.
Next problem to solve will be how to display it so other people can interact and read the story.

Term 3 session 4

We only had one block of the day, so we worked on the Green Eggs and Ham collaborative art. Some of the pages were finished today. Check them out, not bad for five and six year olds.

Term 3 session 3

Started with a warm-up exercise of drawing upside down. These drawing are getting more accurate as the students feel more comfortable about looking at lines.

I introduced the picture plane concept today. We taped a view finder on the classroom window for each of the children and with a whiteboard marker drew the scene outside. To do this the child must hold their head as still as possible and shut one eye, then they trace the images on the window. They did find this quite hard to draw the lines in the environment, so I changed the viewing subject.
The children held a view finder and clear plastic (overhead projector transparency)on their hand and used the picture plane to trace the lines of their hand. We photocopied the image on the clear plastic. The children were amazed at the results. Next step would be to use the photocopies and focus on shadow and light.

Continued with the Green eggs and Ham collaborative art. Drawing on wet strength cartridge they used pencil to draw the images, then used dye of block in the colours. When dry we will redraw the lines with black permanent marker. Each child draws one page, when complete we will put the story in sequence so everyone can read the story without words. The children have enjoyed participating in this project. The artist ability varies, but that is the beauty of cooperating with each other. I get the children to look at each others work and to make suggestions on improving the drawings. They are very good at this and accept the critique of their peers.

Term 3 session 2

The students copied a line drawing that was up the correct way. Then they repeated the drawing with the line drawing upside down, the results were quite marked. The second drawings were far more accurate. To create variety for the children, others forms of art will be introduced using the skills they are learning. It will be interesting to see if they transfer the knowledge into new art.
As part of the variation, the juniors are copying the pictures from Green eggs and Ham as a collaborative collection of drawings to make the story. We practiced copying the pictures today. Most children did really well and made the drawing fit the paper size. They are very excited to be part of such a project.

Term 3 session 1

Upside down drawing

I introduced the students to copying line drawing upside down (that is the line drawing was upside down not the students).
My whole objective is to get the students looking at, and copying the lines. The skills developed in this exercise are spatial awareness: stimating how long the lines are, how big the are lines, the angle they go, how wide apart they are and where they join each other. The students are then looking very carefully and seeing detail they have never noticed before.

Introduction to Term 3 work

After reading Betty Edwards book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
(ISBN 0-87477-419-5) I have decided to teach the children to draw based on her drawing techniques. She bases her ideas on a multitude of research done on the functions of the brain.
A very brief explanation:
The left brain is verbal and rational, it communicates thoughts through numbers, letters and words.
The right brain is non-verbal and intuitive, it thinks in pictures and patterns.

It is commonly known that not everyone thinks or learns the same way. After reading some research on the brain, I am sure promoting the use of the right brain will assist children to learn.
Our education system is designed to use predominately left brain thinking and encouraging children to use their right brain for drawing will be a challenge and I am extremely interested to witness the results.

Painting Finished

The children coloured in the different images on their painting, starting with the objects in the background. It was a real learning curve for the children to understand the different plains (background, mid-ground and foreground). To help them understand we observed out the classroom window and discussed the distance of the sky, horizon, objects further away and the ones that were closer to us.

After everything had been painted, the children painted over the objects again to add details and patterns.
Each child is able to articulate the story in their painting and can justify their use of colours and placing objects on certain parts of the composition.

The painting are now finished.

Beginning to paint composition

The children drew their pictures onto the undercoated cardboard with chalk, copying them from their pre-drawn plan. Chalk is used because it can be easily rubbed off the undercoat if the image is not right. It is important to get the image large and bold; use lines only, no colouring in.

After the chalking had been completed the children painted over the chalk lines with thin blue paint and very thin brush (#0 or #1). This makes the image more permanent when applying the top coats of paint. I use blue and not black because I have found black paint permeates through the other colours after they have been applied. I was delighted to see the children enlarged their images to fit the A2 size cardboard. Certainly modeling and talking through the process helped them understand what was required.

Planning our paintings

We looked at a painting done by Glenda Randerson (Auckland) to discuss the story she was telling. Once the children understood what I was asking them, (by telling a story about another painting) they could tell the story of Glenda’s daughter (subject in the painting) and also identified the images that gave them the clues.

The next step was to get the children talking about what they liked to do and where.
I gave them A2 newsprint and we folded into quarters. On one section they drew themselves doing something they liked, on another, two special things and finally the scene they wanted their story to take place.

Following this process they cut the paper into the quarters, keeping the scene they cut the other images out. They placed them onto the scene to find the best position and glued them.

This became the planning for the painting. I realised the planning sketch was A4 size and that I was expecting the children to enlarge their image onto A2 size.
Alternative for next time, I would get them to draw on the full size first.

To overcome the problem I got the children to redraw their sketch onto A2 newsprint. I was pleasantly surprised to see they handled this well. Proceeding the redrawing they started to colour the images. The bonus of having the redraw was they become more familiar with the images and could make changes and improvements.

We painted the undercoat on the cardboard.

Week 3

Have started observational sketching. Getting the children to really look at the shapes and angles of the object they are sketching. To start with the objects were drawn after a glance or traced around. The quality of drawing improved after demonstrating how to look at one point on the object and getting the eye to move around the perimeter. Observational sketching will become a regular part of the art day.

I also showed the children how to draw a person using the formula of 7 parts. The had to use a ruler to measure 7 even parts, then rule straight lines across the page, a lesson in itself. This was a step by step process to draw a person. After they had followed the instructions the children were expected to draw their own person. It was very satisfying to see the people they drew were in much closer proportion then prior drawings.

Colour theory was also a big part of the learning. We discussed the primary colours (yellow, blue and red). I gave them a large paper, yellow, red and blue paint and 3 paint brushes. We painted the 3 colours separately (so the colours were clean) on the paper then let them mix the colours. It was a delight to hear the conversation and surprised expression as they made green, purple and orange. For the rest of the session they children covered the paper with different blended colours.

It became obvious the children were taking risks with the colour blending and really thinking about the paints they were applying to the paper. They were looking at each others painting and trying to blend the colours that appealed.