The first drawing they do is a positive shape sketch. They simply draw the stool as they see it and darken it. Here's a couple samples.
The second drawing is tough. I ask them just to draw the negative shapes only, without drawing the stool. When I demonstrate this one, I make sure to let them know not to worry too much about how it looks. Pay attention to shapes, proportions and relations between the open spaces. When the inside shapes are done, they can draw a line around the periphery to close it up into the shape of a stool. They can darken the negative shapes if they want. It will come out somewhat abstract, but there is a definite charm to these sketches.
The third, and final, drawing is a blind contour sketch. Art students are familiar with blind contours from life drawing classes, but often my beginning drawing classes are a first introduction. For this sketch, the students set their pencils on their papers and then look at the stool only, not their papers, as they draw. They can do it as a continuous line, or they can lift their pencils, but they can not look at their papers. This takes a little good-humored policing on the teacher's part. Again, I have to emphasize that this is not a test, and there's no trick to it. A blind contour drawing will look like a blind contour drawing.
When we are done, we talk about the experience. Very often, the students discover that it is with the blind contour that they get the proportions and shape of the stool most accurate. This project seems to work well when we do the drawings in the order I've indicated here. I ask them to pick their favorite of each type of sketch and we glue them as a triptych to one piece of paper or construction paper. They can do as many of these as they want if they did multiple sketches.
