So, what did we do, then I will say what worked and what didn't work.
Class 1: Seashells
1.Intro. "Welcome to Nature In Art.....I like to make art....sometimes messy, creative art, and sometimes neat, detail-oriented art..."
*that I bring in lots of books each class, and place them on a table for them to go pick up and bring back to their seat to look at during the class--when they need a break from drawing.
2.Make Sketch books. Each student had a place setting with 10 pieces of 12X18 paper, 3-5 drawing pencils: HB, 3B, 4B, 5B, 6B, one extra large/thick needle to make holes in paper with, one regular needle with brown threaded-arms length, kneaded & vinyl eraser.
(Making the sketch books took a while--longer than I thought it would. This is just a project that you can't teach quickly. Once a student has done it once, it would be so quick to re-do; but the first time takes time.)
3. Drawing Pencil explanation. I gave a quick description of drawing pencils. I did not go into great detail. But, I broke down the basics.
4. Make a 6 Rectangle Value Scale drawing--easy-peasy. Make a long rectangle the length of your page. Break the rectangle into 6 relatively same-sized boxes. Then the first box on the left is all white. The last box on the far left is all black. The boxes gradually grow darker from the white, to a little bit of gray, to a little bit more gray, to gray, to darker gray, to dark gray, to all black.
**here I taught "cross-hatching"--a method of shading.
**or they could scribble or use a soft shading method.
**I gave them the option - If they WANTED they could have a homework assignment and make another value scale at home. The could make another rectangle like they did in class or they could shake things up and do an abstract/contour line wacky drawing and use the shapes to make 6 different scales of gray, black, white in that abstract way/creative way.
5.Draw Seashells. Each table had one or two trays full of seashells. They could pick one of pick an arrangement to work from. They only had 5-10 minutes to work on this, so it wasn't long enough to really get far.
What did NOT work: well, I think I *should* have offered warm up exercises/drawings to break them out of the 'afraid' to make a bad drawing syndrome. A few students really seemed not sure what to do and it always helps to give them an out--like doing a "Blind Drawing" (having them draw that seashell while NOT looking at the page). Then if the drawing looks all crazy, it is expected b/c 'hey, you weren't even looking!!' So, I need to give them some FUN, ice-breaker type of warm-up drawing exercises to get them going; plus they are fun. Even the "fill a whole page with horizontal lines" assignment can be fun and challenging. It all depends upon where the students are starting from; and this class really has all levels.
What I didn't do well:
1. Transition into the "drawing stage" of the class for the beginning students specifically. The more experienced students jumped in and just started drawing the seashells; but a lot of the other students wanted more instruction.
2. I talked too much.
3. Started clean up too late, and the next class had to wait on me to get our stuff out of the room. I need to get the students to help me more by me being more specific about who does what in my clean up/pack up needs.
What I did well: With the exceptions of scissors (which I thought would be provided by the classroom supplies bin), I had more than enough of everything. It was all organized, set up, and ready to go before class started.
The books I brought this week: 4-5 books on John James Audubon, 5-6 books on Seashells and Sea Life, and the artist of the week was Georgia O'Keefe. No one had a chance to go to the table and look at any of the books b/c we were so rushed for time.
Class 2: Flowers
What we did:
Went over what a "Diagrammatic Drawing" is and showed one of mine, and some from the Nature Journal book I have.
Showed a "View Finder" -white frame with clear vellum in the middle for finding your picture from a still life.
Showed/discussed a "Grid" and the details of what and why and how.
*all three of these topics seemed to fall flat. I still do not have a very good feel for these students. They really didn't seem at all interested. I don't know if it is just ME or what. The 5th graders were VERY interested in the grid---especially a few, specific students.
Then we did some pencil exercises--how to use your pencil and what you can do with the different pencils.
-while making straight lines push hard then light then hard as you go across the page.
-make a wave, up and down with your 6B then go behind that wave with a new wave on a different wave with a HB pencil. The students had a hard time understanding what I wanted with that and next time I should have examples done to show them--and maybe some paper taped up for me to do while they watch.
Composition Exercise: I had them guess where the flowers would go on a blank page of paper, from a zerox of a print out drawing of a grouping of flowers. The print out had 5 flowers arranged on the page in various areas on the page...I had them try to guess where to put the 5 circles representing the 5 flower blooms on a blank page; then put the print out behind their blank page and hold it up to the light to see how close they were to being right, or how off they were.
Drawing exercises--"Upside down drawing" of the vases of dried flowers on their tables. "Blind Contour" of the vases--we did 5-6 of these short 1-2 minute drawings. Then "Half-Blind Contour Drawings"-were they could look once or twice at the vases during the 1-2 drawing exercise. Then on the last drawing exercise they HAD to try to draw as messy and dark as they could....which really needs more practice. I was looking for black pages and they didn't get it. I need to make an example of this for them too.
Then they had 25 minutes to either work on their still life at their table or a zerox drawing I had for them at the table of a drawn flower.
What I did right: I didn't talk nearly as much. I "felt" much better about doing the second class; even days before the class. I can tell the kids are not really expecting much and I can relax.
What I could improve upon: I need more examples of what I want them to do. I did have examples of the drawing exercises; but not of the pencil exercises. I will work on that this week.
This time clean up was about 3 minutes TOO EARLY! I need to do a better job at getting the timing right.
What I want to make sure I do:
Go over what a NATURE JOURNAL is!!!!
Points:*Observe- *Explore- *Define
Do drawing exercises that loosen up the class, warm them up and encourage them to be daring!
a fun link for this class would be:
http://vihart.com/blog/doodling-fibonacci-2/
Here is what I did with the last Nature in Art class in 2012--I will be going over these concepts again with the new students:
The concept we discussed/taught was on "Composition"/Design. This is an area that most of the students really haven't gotten yet. To help understand this concept I took one zerox of a drawing of a group of flowers and printed it with a clear grid on top of it. The zerox had a light grid printed on top of the page. Almost every student had their own copy of this page; a few had to share. I had the students take a new sheet of paper and try to estimate where the 5 large blooms would go on their new sheet if they were trying to replicate this flower drawing. I just wanted them to see how to visually section off their page into quadrants and figure out where on the page the blooms went. All they had to do was draw the 5 ovals/circles. This was an exercise in HOW WE PLAN A DRAWING--composition. I am trying to stress the importance of building the whole page as a drawing, not just dropping a drawing of an item in the middle of a white page and leaving it there floating. This was discussed - again like last week- and urged the students to think of making their drawing 'interesting'. "What makes a drawing interesting?", "What can I do to make my drawing more interesting?" Then I gave ideas and let the students supply answers and acknowledged that each answer was correct. I especially liked it when one student said to add lots of different color values and shades. Then, that was enough discussion - time to draw!
