Two-Handled Pots

I found three very rustic ceramic pots that had been in the classroom for ages, and whoever made them was long gone. So I kept them for drawing and built this exercise around them.

I show the pots to the students, walking around the room, and moving the pots so that they can see every angle. Then I put them away out of sight and have the students draw them from memory. Usually I tell them to pick one to draw.

The students always draw them the same way. First, they draw them face-on with a limited perspective. Second, they draw them with the handles on the left and right, instead of angled. Third, they always stylize the shapes to a more conventional vessel instead of the rustic one they saw.

I've only had one student ever draw one differently. He was the student who came to class with a stack of drawing books under his arm. He reminded me of myself when I was a first-year art student and I had a similar exercise.

We look at the results and I bring the pots out again. I tell them that it is perfectly logical and appropriate to draw the pots symmetrically. This is the easiest and most effective way to communicate the nature of the pot. But I have them compare their memories to the actual pots, and they see how often they substitute a stereotype of a pot for the distinctive pot I showed them. I then place the pots in the center of the table and encourage the students to draw them again from sight.

I encourage them to keep both drawings.

Eventually, I broke one of the pots when they were rattling around in my van. But I still have two of them and I might even make some more. Here's one student's results.

Three Ways of Drawing

For this lesson, I usually place a wooden bar stool on the table or up on a display cube for the students to draw. I give all the students pieces of drawing paper I've cut to size at about 6" x 10" or so. They will be doing three sketches (they can do as many of each kind as they want) and I demonstrate each as we come to it. I emphasize that this isn't a test or a competition and that the point isn't to end up with perfect, realistic drawings. They should try to be accurate, but not fixate on being perfect.

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.

Group Painted Found Door

One day on my way to class, I saw someone had put a free door on the curb. Of course I grabbed it and threw it in my van.

The door was a great project, because the whole class sat around it and painted it. The students had to make sure they all shared the space, and they had to determine how to run their art up against the other art so that the whole door became one artwork. I was pleased by how well they worked together without any conflicts.

We displayed the door in an art show and in the classroom for the rest of the school year. Then we got rid of it when it was time to make some room.

Ink Transfer Shoe Drawings

Here's another ink transfer lesson plan.

This is a great lesson for a number of reasons. For one thing, shoes have a lot of information. We wear them on our feet all the time, but do we ever take time to really examine them? Also, the details on most shoes are very linear, making them a great subject for this project.

Drawing your shoes could be tedious, so I give the students a fun lesson to make it more enjoyable. One of the reasons I like a process that mechanically produces the art, like printmaking or ceramics, is that the end product is a surprise for the artist. It comes together all at once before the creator's eyes. In this regard, the process is responsible for finishing the project (to a certain degree) and the artist sees it fresh as soon as it is finished. With ink transfer, he or she can make adjustments easily, too.

I have the students remove their shoes. Now, I realize in some places this is not allowed for health reasons, for fire safety, or because it could be considered abusive. I never had any trouble with it, but you could get a bunch of shoes from Goodwill if it makes everyone more comfortable. It's one way to avoid the inevitable stinky feet jokes. One of my teachers brought a box of shoes to class and it turned into a major series of paintings for her. Shoes are fun!

Anyway, my kids used their own shoes, which is cool because they are paying more attention to something they have with them all day long and don't know much about. I generally have them place one shoe flat on the sole and the other turned on its side to expose the bottom. This can be challenging as an ink transfer. They could retrace their drawing if it doesn't work, but who wants to draw something this hard twice? So, take a look at my ink transfer lesson plan to see the process and make sure it works for them. Don't let them get too far if the transfer isn't happening.

Here are some results. I'm amazed, looking back on these, that they were done by children! I can't help wondering if the process makes it psychologically easier to draw them. Notice how most of them have a slight overlap. I must have made sure the students arranged them that way. For the older students, some foreshortening is in order. Note how a number of these students got the foreshortening!

Ink Transfers

Also called oil transfers (depending upon what medium you use), this was a favorite of Paul Klee. I saw a show of his yesterday at the Boston College and I was surprised that, in person, I could hardly tell the difference between his transfers and his lithographs—and I'm a printmaker.

I've mentioned before that I have a big stack of clear acrylic (Plexiglas) plates that I cut for the students. They are around 12" x 18" or so, with the edges rounded. We ink these up with brayers using speedball waterbased ink. It takes some practice to get the carpet of ink the right thickness. Listen for a whisper when you roll. Make sure you use an ink that doesn't dry too fast. This is one of those lessons that needs to be tested ahead of time.

You can use one or two sheets of paper, depending upon whether or not you want to keep the drawing or have a clean verso on your print. You have to press harder if you use two. Let's use one sheet for this example. The student lays the paper down softly on the plate. If, in touching the plate, a little ink stains the paper, that's a desired effect that adds to the final image, but tell the students not to press the paper down with their hands.

Then the student simply does their drawing. Try not to move the paper too much on the plate. If it does move, it won't matter for the process, but it could make smudges and also you want all the linear areas to hit good ink. Have your students lift the corners early on to make sure they have the pressure right and to adjust it as they go. When they are done with the drawing, they turn over the paper and see their drawing in ink. The magic is that the ink feels less drawn and more printed, and the touches of ink from the plate around the drawing add a rustic, accidental charm. The ink you use might resist watercolor. If it does, while wet or after it dries, you could work back into the drawing with a wash.

Make sure that you allow for your students to have another go to make adjustments based on what they discover. For example, many times they learn that something they wrote—like their name—got reversed. Watch as they try to figure out how to do it again and get their names the right way. You can tell them Picasso didn't care and has his name backwards on a lot of his prints.

Strangely, I think I recognize the student in the self-portrait on the top right. Isn't that interesting? Obviously I remember who did it, but in my mind, it looks like her, even as simple as it is.

Discipline

I saw my muse the other day. I was distracted for a moment by some abstract thoughts and, looking off toward the sunlight, I saw her.

I asked, "where in the world have you been?"

She said, "I keep dropping by but you're always so busy working I don't want to interrupt you. You look so intense. You don't even see me at the window, so I just figure I'll come by sometime when you're daydreaming. Like just now."

Painted Texture Collages

—Lesson Plans—

This project can be done with any media on paper. Here we've used finger paint. A great way to begin is to ask students to think of an animal in an environment. We always have animal books on the reference shelf to help.

I get the students thinking about all the different elements they will have in their picture. An animal. Some vegetation. The ground. The sky. I give the students full and half sheets of paper and they draw the outline of each object on the paper, leaving lots of room around it. It has to be a drawing that makes sense as a very simple shape, such as the fish below.

Because we need room for making textures on the reverse, and for easily cutting the shapes, the students might only want one or two shapes on each piece of paper, depending upon the sizes. For things like the sky and ground, they don't need to do a drawing. Then they separate all these elements onto different pieces of paper by cutting or tearing down their larger papers so that every element is on its own paper.

For the next step, the students turn over their papers and create textures on the reverse, covering all the paper, and using colors and textures that make sense given the subject. The sky and ground, or anything large, can be dealt with simply be painting a piece of paper that is large enough.

Once the paint dries, the students turn the papers over and cut on the outlines, so that they have textured and colored shapes of their objects, without any drawn lines, or details. They collage everything together to make their picture, laying it out, first, and then gluing it to a larger paper or board once they are satisfied. They might want to paint a few minor details, such as the eyes on the fish below, to finish the piece, if they feel it needs some accents.

The example below is different. This young student did not understand the concept of using the drawing as a preliminary step that would be lost in the process. She didn't want to let go of her original drawings, so she glued the textured sides down, obscuring that part of the process, except for the traces of paint that smudged or bled through. The result is quite attractive and very interesting. Some processes are too difficult for a younger child to conceptualize. But she wasn't frustrated and whatever way they go with the project is okay with me as long as they are developing.