Week 5 – Approaches to Drawing

Approaches to drawing

Today in class we learned a few drawing techniques that could be used in a variety of ways to teach a variety of skills. One way that I would like to incorporate these skills into a drawing and painting class would be to have an overarching sketchbook project that accumulated entries daily or more frequently if the student desired. This would be incorporated in to a daily role activity which serves to allow the students to refocus on creativity at the beginning of every class while the teacher takes attendance and administers to any housekeeping issues like passing out permission slips or talking to individual students privately. It is also good for students who depend on some element of predictability, for example a student with autism or anxiety issues.

In the beginning of the semester the role activity would be open for students to sketch anything. I would scaffold this activity with an emphasis on play and exploration of mark making and a wide variety of supplies would be available for the students to try new things. After 5 or so classes of exploratory sketches, I would start posting the role activity on an overhead for all students to see as they walked into the classroom. One example could be creating tone using hatching. There would be examples on the board that showed how to change a circle into a sphere using hatching. The students would try this in their sketchbooks for the first 5-7 minutes of class. Then next day they would have a similar activity but using cross hatching. The following day, stippling. Then smudging and so on. On the 5^th day, the students would use their 5-7 min time to use the new techniques learned over the week in a new way, perhaps to shade in a doodle of their name or by doing a quick still life of an object in their book bag.

These role activities would progress throughout the semester and one of the last units on drawing would be a self directed project where they use some of the ideas developed in their sketchbook throughout the class. The project would be open and they could recreate something or make a collage from their sketchbook.

For assessment, the focus would be on the process and not the product. I would have quick informal meetings with the students before the final project to get an idea of where they started, where they are now and where they are going for their self directed drawing in order to help me to understand their process. I would also get the students to do a self evaluation.

There are many PLOs that could be used as a guide for this project. Here are a few from the PLOs of the grade 11 fine arts IRP.

• Create/perform a work of art demonstrating the use of strategies for developing an artistic image or idea.
• Create/perform a work of art expressing the students’ own ideas, thoughts or feelings.

Their sketchbook could also function as an extension activity throughout the semester if a student finished a project early and needed something to do for the last couple of minutes in a class.