Cartooning

The students requested cartooning and I love to accommodate.  This lesson is so much fun because the students can really be silly and funny with their ideas and drawings.  Their imaginations are filled with great ideas.  They just need help to get it all on paper.

I had the class “cartoon” an object.  They had to pick an inanimate object to draw first, like a water bottle, and add humanoid traits.  Cartooning is a form of abstracting, so the class had to draw the object correctly before they were to abstract it to a cartoon. The art of abstracting the object is quite fun!  The students were making things too big, too small, adding props, and creating strange situations, making fun and interesting characters.

We also has the student take turns teaching the class the cartoons they knew how to draw...Snoopy was a big hit.

Working on Pointilism

These students are working hard on pointillism...one dot at a time....

I've asked them to draw their design on scrap paper (without the dots) to practice what will work better through dots. Textured objects work well in pointillism; veggies and fruits, animals, nature and leaves, fish and shells. We are working on small paper(thank goodness).  Every point of color must be put on one dot at a time without scribbling or making small lines.  Take deep breaths everyone and place your dots slowly.  If you get frustrated, just take a break and come back to it later...


Here is some finished work....

Drawing Ideas

High School Student work, pencil

High School Student Work, colored pencil

"I don't know what to draw..."
This statement happens so often!  Students feel as though they have to draw 'something pretty' or at least 'something identifiable'. 

I will continue to post drawing ideas each week.  Feel free to post some of your own ideas or drawings...


Draw a necktie and design an interesting pattern on it.
Draw a medal for yourself. It must be designed for the thing you do best.
Draw a city on another planet.
You are a toy designer; draw your new toy.
Draw a logo for a t.v. show

Pointillism

Pointillism is our next project...

Pointillism
What is Pointillism?

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which a lot of tiny dots are combined to form a picture. The reason for doing pointillism instead of a picture with physical mixing is that, supposedly, physically mixing colors dulls them. Most of the painters of Seurat's time blended the colors to make a picture with a smoother feeling than Seurat's bright, dotty works.

Seurat

Student work

Student Work

Student work

When two colors are right next to each other your eye mixes them in a process called, "optical mixing." Using optical mixing rather than physical mixing can create a brighter picture. Painting a pointillist piece is a slow and painstaking process. Seurat's famous "A Sunday in the Park on the Island of La Grande Jatte" (more commonly known as "Sunday in the Park"), which covered a wall (81 inches by 120 inches), took him two years to complete. He was known for amazing devotion and concentration. The dots in a pointillist painting can be as small as 1/16 of an inch in diameter! Based on these measurements, "Sunday in the Park" has approximately 3,456,000 dots!

From Wikipedia: Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small distinct dots of color create the impression of a wide selection of other colors and optical blending. Aside from color "mixing" phenomena, there is the simpler graphic phenomenon of depicted imagery emerging from disparate points. Historically, Pointillism has been a figurative mode of executing a painting, as opposed to an abstract modality of expression.

The technique relies on the perceptive ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to mix the color spots into a fuller range of tones and is related closely to divisionism, a more technical variant of the method. It is a technique with few serious practitioners and is notably seen in the works of Seurat, Signac and Cross. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works of these artists and is now used without its earlier mocking connotation.

Portfolio Review

Every student in the art club was required to submit a recent drawing. This assignment is similiar to a portfolio review that a professional artist or college artist might have to give.
A portfolio is like an audition for a performer.  A singer would have to sing a song; an artist brings his or her best recent drawings. We collectively looked at each drawing and critiqued it.  I always ask questions, "Did you follow the directions?" "Did you draw the object life-size?".  Life-size was not a requirement, but it is a good thing for learning artists to be critical of.  "Did you draw this pear bigger or smaller than the real pear you had?"

Having the real object to observe made a true difference in the quality of the students drawings.  It was clear from the drawings which students had a real vegetable or fruit to draw.

Working on Black Paper

These girls are working on our black paper project.  They started with scrap paper to work out the design first, then they are drawing their design again on the final paper.  Looks Great!

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Winter Cardinals

For our second class, we drew winter cardinals on colored paper. This project is great for the winter! I give the students a funny shaped template that is just the outline of the bird. Most students don't know what the shape is. I have them draw the side wing, tail, and legs. The branch is added with pencil and the berries and leaves were the students ideas. The sky and bird can be colored with colored pencil or crayon, making sure to press hard when coloring the branch. I usually give students inspiration in the form of printed images of cardinals and branches.

There is very few rules for the projects.  For this one, the class had to draw a winter scene, a cardinal, and branches....Students like to push limits and break boundries...

There were a few drawings of Angry Birds, and other silly things.  I loved it!