Graphite Portraits

For our final drawing project, we decided to get down to business! People are easily one of the hardest subjects to draw because if you are just a little off, it won't look right. That being said, my students BLEW ME OUT OF THE WATER with what they accomplished. We began the lesson by having everyone draw a portrait with no instruction and then I showed them the most commonly made mistakes when drawing the face. We then went through the rights and wrongs of drawing lips, eyes, noses, and hair.

After demonstrating how to sketch and measure the dimensions of the face, the students were off! Each with a picture of a celebrity, they patiently drew for the remaining weeks of school.

     

Talitha Call, grade 7, drew Lindsey Stirling. Teeth are hard and she nailed it!

 

Rebecca Ross, Grade 6, drew Taylor Swift.

Larisa Kozhevnikova, Grade 10, drew a Russian celeb whose name now escapes me...

Vincent Baird, Grade 7, drew Tim Tebow.

Amariah Adams, Grade 9, drew Jennifer Lawrence. The Charcoal was an excellent touch to made this portrait really pop!

Julia Fox, Grade 8, drew Emma Stone. They actually look very much alike and she did wonderful!

As a teacher, I am tremendously proud of how well everyone did and of all that we accomplished this year! I'm going to miss my amazing artists!

Hand-Lettering Quotes

So, I will admit this project is a little out-dated. We actually did this one after calligraphy and before letter-illustration. 

The objective for this project was to create the illusion of a calligraphy or brush pen while only using a normal pen. Hand-lettering is SO popular right now (if you have a Pinterest account, you know!) so, it was fun to experiment with hand-lettering a bit. Some students chose the same quote that they used during calligraphy while others changed it, but as usual the variety was amazing! Students were supposed to use at least two fonts of their own design, implement various font sizes and they needed to fill an imaginary shape (oval, square, etc.) 

Amen, Amariah!

We have a trekkie in our midsts! Love it, Talitha.

I love the "swashes" Julia added here.

Isn't this so true? Great shape Larisa!

Though this project came with it's fair share of challenges I thought they did wonderful. Is there anything these kids can't do?!

Calligraphy Quotes

If I'm being completely honest here, calligraphy is not my favorite thing in the world. I was first exposed to it when I was a Sophomore in high school. I was chosen as the Honor Society secretary, and as such was given the responsibility of hand writing the names on the certificates for the incoming members of the Honor Society... in calligraphy. Even after what felt like a million names, I still wasn't all that great at it. Then during my senior year of high school I took a calligraphy class, which was fun and all, but still I had a long way to go. I will admit that I thought that was the end of the road for calligraphy and I... until I had some drawing students ask if we could learn how to do it. And, because I REALLY love I students, I said yes. After all, calligraphy is the art of drawing your letters.

As an introduction to calligraphy we learned about where it came from and all the different things it is used for. I tried to show examples of where they may want to use calligraphy in their own lives  down the road (ie: addressing envelopes, writing certificates, signs, etc.) and we looked at classic calligraphy vs. modern calligraphy (or hand-lettering. shown below) Here and here you can view some amazing videos of artists writing in calligraphy. It's mesmorizing.

With a crash course in calligraphy (and I mean CRASH course, because there is way more to this stuff than meets the eye) our drawing students dove into the art of writing. With a watercolor accented background, each student chose a simple quote to "draw". The variety was so cool, and the quotes were nothing short of wonderful. Check them out!

For their first time doing calligraphy, I'm pretty darn impressed.

Basic Figure Drawings

I'm kicking myself because after weeks of drawing, I graded my students incredible drawings and sent them home without taking pictures! As an introduction to drawing and using professional drawing pencils, we created value drawings of a series of Willow Tree figurines. These are great because they are made up of basic shapes that are fairly easy to identify. Proportion and correct values proved to be the real challenge. Our drawing class took the challenge head-on and conquered it with ease!

We began by identifying the head, arms, and body and breaking them up into a series of circles, ovals, and rectangles. From there we perfected the outline as a whole identified the shapes of shadows and began adding layers of smooth value with the help of graphite pencils of various lead hardnesses (6B, 2B, HB, and 2-4H)

Contour Line Drawing

The subject of Drawing seems pretty basic. You just learn how to convey an image on paper... Right?  WRONG! Within each aspect of drawing there seems to be 52 million layers of detail, techniques, and skills to follow- well, maybe that is an exaggeration- 51 million layers. To start our school year, we have been learning about the many different techniques to create stylistic, valued and 3-dimensional looking images. To start, we learned about contour line drawings. Of course, there are many styles of contour drawings, but for this project we focused on the contours of the hand.

The way a line curves and the space left between the lines can give an illusion of 3-dimensional form (as seen below!)

For this contour drawing our students chose to position one of their hands in front of them in a certain symbol or pose, and create a contour drawing using a pencil in the other.

Something I loved seeing was how different everyone's hand positions were, and how even though eight artists can use the same materials and do the same assignment, that their individual artistic styles still show through.

Rebekka S. spaced her delicate lines out quite a bit creating an overall light value, while simulating every bend and curve.

Rebekah R. used thicker, bold lines to bring new life and emphasis to an ever-familiar image of a hand.

Angelina K. expressed in her post-project reflection that if she were to do it again, she'd center her hand on the page. I however think that not having it centered brings a very interesting composition to the piece! And the way her lines change direction at the thumb knuckle- Stellar.

Light, dark, thick, thin, hang loose, live long and prosper or high five-our artists brought all they had to the table for this contour drawing!