Drawing

For some reason drawing always manages to extract a groan from children and adults alike.
This is a great shame because drawing is an extremely rewarding activity. From a teaching perspective it's exciting because I often find plenty surprises from my students. However I have discovered that in order to find something fresh, some of the students own residue negativity must be brushed off. For most people great drawings don't happen immediately. I feel drawing needs time, air and a certain type of attitude to allow emotions, eyes and hands to coordinate because it's a skill we don't use in everyday life for the most part.

Project Introduction
The next project was at first taught during teaching practice in Reading, UK and then repeated again in Yamagata ken, Japan with my 2nd and 3rd year students at junior high school.
In both cases I had noticed that students had great difficulty drawing objects where ellipses occurred. Often the ellipse was draw in two parts and had points or corners where the near edge appeared to join the far edge. Attending to this problem would I hoped help students feel more confident when facing still-life projects later in the term and beyond.
The first two pieces are final drawings made by Yr10. The following pictures show some of the stages carried out in Japan before the final drawing was made.

The Initial Stages
I wrote four words on the board; teacup, wine glass, teapot and bowl. I asked the students to think for a few moments and imagine what these objects looked like. Using scrap paper and pens, they drew their imagined objects. For the most part the objects were devoid of shading and were mostly an outline form. Students then moved about the room and looked at each others drawings.
On each table I then placed one of the listed objects and instructed the students to carefully look at the shape, texture and position while drawing. This time students were given five minutes to complete each drawing using a pencil on scrap paper, then rotated to the next table.
At the end of this exercise the students compared their fantasy drawings to the real observed version. In the UK, table led discussion worked well, but in Japan students had trouble talking together. However the difference in the perceived objects and the real was very clear. The real objects showed more depth and this brought up the subject of ellipses.
From here, once again on scrap paper I asked the students to loosen their wrists, to make endless circles and elliptical shapes freely, to switch between pen and pencil. I asked students to try creating a series of stacked ellipses and to join them together using a line down the left and right sides. This was when the technique began to click, especially with the boys.
The next stages were drawing exercises set up around compositions of crockery, bottles and glasses where students used different media, soft pencils, toothbrushes and ink, pens (biro, felt, marker) and bamboo pens and ink. Students worked to show shading, form, line and texture. I demonstrated different shading techniques and encouraged them to be as experimental as possible. Groups rotated around the media tables. My hope was that they would find a style they liked using and felt comfortable with.
The end of each lesson closed with students looking at the work done by everyone. I asked them to think about what they had discovered and how they had improved since last lesson and what had they seen that they liked.

As the students drawing confidence grew we prepared the backgrounds for the final pieces. Again this was to extend their experiences of techniques and the qualities of ink. Personally, I am very interested in Japanese ink paintings and like how much texture and atmosphere can be created with brushes, water and ink alone. Once again I demonstrated some techniques to the students and encouraged experimentation.
Finally each student had at least two good backgrounds and sample papers too. The samples were used as tests when the student drew using bleach and correction pens or as warm-ups for the final pieces.

Having read through this procedure, it may seem long-winded, however I was very pleased with the outcomes at each stage because it was easy to see and feel the students confidence growing. My overall aim was to allow enough time for them to actually understand what they were doing and to experience ways to draw unique to themselves. The additional benefits were that ellipses were no longer an issue and that they realised they didn't always need to use pencils to draw with.