One of the things I appreciate about teaching drawing is that, occasionally, I also get to draw! Sometimes I draw as a demo for students. Other times I draw while they do. Either way, it's such a pleasure to feel my pencil glide across the paper, to see the image evolve, to find the darks and lights. I love working with color, but drawing in graphite was my first love and still has my heart every time I do it.
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| #81 |
The exercise for the pears was a chance for students to pull together everything they'd learned in class up to that point - volume, line, value, shadow, and more - and put it into one picture - no pressure! I find they seem to be glad to work for an hour or more on a picture with no pressure to rush - just the delight and absorbing pleasure of working until they feel finished.
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| #80 |
And then there are the still lifes... When I was in school, I found these so boring - such stupid items placed together in such dumb ways - what was the point?! Now as a teacher, I have a different understanding - it helps students tackle composition and complicated images. It's a chance to work on the relationships between items and to draw difficult objects like glass and to practice creating form using value. Now I kinda like doing them.
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| #82 |
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| #83 |
One of the exercises I give my students in Intermediate Drawing is to bring in a single object which is rather complicated. Then I give them the assignment to draw it at least 10 times in 10 different ways (using gesture, blind contour, modified blind contour, super-sized, 1" small, etc.) using different materials each time - pencil, charcoal, peelable charcoal, pen, etc. It tends to be a challenging exercise as it stretches a student's ability to think of different ways to approach the same subject and to keep it interesting. Below is my drawing of our wire cutters.
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| #84 |
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