Watercolour Experiments

SEnior Art has started their Sculpture UNIT- Video Below

Second Semester has begun with Blurry to Clear Drawing Practice

Senior art students were exposed to some famous artists, Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso. We looked at their contour line drawings and wire sculptures as well as Picasso's single continuous line drawings. 

Art students were challenged with drawing various instruments around the room. Their tasks included: 

1. create contour line drawings with no shading

2. continuous line drawing where they could not lift their pencil from the paper 

3. attempt a BLIND continuous line drawing. This is where they had to draw without looking at their hand or paper. 

It was a fun way for students to get comfortable with hand-eye coordination and drawing proportions while practicing and not perfecting. 

The strongest message is that not all drawings will be successful, but practicing skills like this help them to improve. 

Students were encouraged to think about using these drawings for other projects as well. 

Working on the RIGHT side of the Brain. Here is a really great exercise in approaching drawing/painting that forces you to ‘let go’. It enables artists to carefully observe, rather than draw what they think the subject 'should' look like. 

We start with a really blurry photo, it is also upside down. The photo gets more clear every 10 minutes with 6 stages. This enables artists to simplify values and colour into simple shapes. This is also practice for drawing from life and using sighting techniques. The students needed a lot of encouragement to focus on the process and not the end result. This was a first for many of the students and they asked to try another, which I will arrange for a later date.