Contour Line Model

  

Grade 4’s drew me.  Scary to see how the children interpret me but I didn’t want any child to miss time drawing while being a model.  I also find the children are not happy about the model changing when I swap the children to give them turns to draw.  Sitting for long periods is really difficult for them too.

They drew with one line, unbroken and continuous.  This gives the picture a certain style and forces the children to focus on the subject more.

We then dyed the work in a splotchy fashion with a sponge dipped in a tea and coffee mix – coffee alone would be fine but I was hoping the tea would help cut some of the stickiness of the coffee.

Next lesson we used related colours to colour certain self-chosen parts of the work.  They were not to touch the black pen lines so as to create a stained window look.  When they did this properly it looked gorgeous.

Related colours: When I explain this to the learners I tell them they are the colours in a family.  For example green is the baby of yellow and blue, orange is the baby of red and yellow.  Therefore, these groups are colours that are related to each other.  The kids were allowed to choose two related colours (like blue and green, yellow and green etc.) and use every version/tone of those colours that they could find between my pencils and theirs in their pencil cases.

So…in marking these pictures I’m looking for

• one line used
• two related colours used
• use of space
• complete

The picture does not need to look just like me or even like a female necessarily.

Still Life Based on 3D Principles

My grade 6’s did their worksheet and basic drawing helping them understand the difference between 2D and 3D shapes.  I felt it couldn’t end there so we did a still life drawing/painting afterward to try and immortalise the concept in their minds.  I therefore had to find objects which could easily be drawn in 3 dimensions again.

We started in pencil – and I allowed erasers to their great joy.  Seeing as the sketches were so beautiful just as they were but needing more I went for soft colours in paint yet not paint.  i gave them tea, coffee, watered down black paint (cause I’d run out of ink) and red ink to work with.

We used newspaper college for the table-cloth and went over the pencils lines again in the end to help them stand out after the painting process. 

Some were beautiful but I do think I need to rethink the way I did this project/concept.