Drawing Days
My students. THEY. LOVE. TO. DRAW! Paper and pencil are easily accessible to my students outside of art class. So in my curriculum, they more often work with materials and artistic methods that are less ubiquitous. Sometimes these units integrate drawing as part of the larger project. But I set a priority for my students to learn a variety of media: printmaking, ceramics, painting (tempera, acrylic, watercolor), graphic design (Photoshop), fiber/weaving, sculptural 3D techniques (paper, cardboard), collage, and mixed media.
For the occasional drawing-only units, I have taught TEKS that center around media, methods and techniques. E.g. shading/values, figural or facial proportion, gesture drawings, contour drawings, observational/still life drawings, or how to apply different drawing media (oil pastel, chalk pastel, color pencil, marker, pen etc). I’ve also tried a couple of Step-by-Step/Part-to-Whole illustration and drawing activities as a sponge lesson for classes were ahead of the pack, or a seasonal reward day. Here are some examples of student work from these activities (the Charlie Brown illustrations by Kinders always make me smile!):
So many of my students, at all grades, want to get the “tricks of the trade” for illustrative drawing. They want to increase their skills for creating representational, pencil to paper pictures. In a previous blog post, I reflected on how sometimes they can use a break from more independently-driven, personal, expressive prompts. I was advised to have students work on a quick activity that could help them build skill and confidence within a highly structured format. With all this in mind, I plan to try out “Drawing Days” more intently this year.
I’ll be back to reflect on how Drawing Days work out. The goal is to integrate a different style of teaching than what I usually deliver, in small doses, within my curriculum for all classes. Drawing Days will be like a mini-lesson that teach students how to illustrate and draw representationally, by breaking down a problem (the whole picture) into smaller, approachable parts (shape, line, texture, color). With this learning goal in mind, I found a great article from SchoolArts magazine that helped me brainstorm some “I Can” statements for my elementary-level Drawing Days.
In their sketchbooks (manila folders), students already create and store their free time drawings. Now they will add work from the structured Drawing Days, and later they can independently flourish these works during free time.
There are some excellent blogs by helpful art teachers out there that provide a plethora of anchors and resources for drawing activities like these. I want to give a shout out here and share: Expressive Monkey; Art Projects for Kids; Deep Space Sparkle; ArtistsHelpingChildren.org; Craftsy Drawing.