Nature/Art Class for LHE: Ideas and Scraps of thought...

 Nature In Art 

Class for LHE

 

Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth

Don't bother with this post-- I am just trying to figure out some ideas.  Michelle, from my "SL Weekly Core E Chat" asked me what I had planned for my Nature/Art Class; and I therefore was suppose to respond to that direct question....so I did...when I was finishing up the last sentence I thought: 'I should post this on my blog, and I can add things that I think of as I think of them in one spot...'

Thursday I have to be ready for my nature/art class.  I am still trying to figure out exactly what I am going to do.  I know the first class we are going to briefly go over "classification" and how we break things in nature into categories and how that really helps us to identify everything.  How our purpose of this class is to 1) Give God all the credit and glory for his "Artwork" which he created for us.  2) Understand some specific parts of nature better by drawing them  3) in class we will make our own sketch books.  I plan on choosing a few sections from Apologia's WHO IS GOD? book that specifically talked about how nature is God's work for us to see and appreciate.  That book had some really great sections referring to nature that I am going to pull out and read a bit during each class.  I will bring in some nature things for them to draw...seeds, plants, flowers, rocks, pinecones..  But, I am still open to whatever the Lord puts in my heart.

  I don't know what works for other people; but with this group of kids - they have short attention spans - so I usually set up 5 "stations" and put them in small groups of 2 or 3 and then have them go from one station to the next.  At each station will be something new for them to draw. 

Last year, I made a light box and had a strongly contrasted still life set up for them.  I thought they could draw for about 20 minutes on that one still life; but that just about did them all in.  The class is mostly boys, I don't know if that matters or not, but the majority of the class wants to keep moving.  There was one boy who really wanted to just do one drawing and focus on it; and was a true, die-hard perfectionist; but he was not in the majority.  I would let him stay and the others move on. 

I also plan on bringing in the Fibonacci sequence--maybe the second or third class.  My Dh got me some graph paper.  I thought about showing them a Vi Hart youtube video and then letting them try one on the graph paper.
Here is a link to Vi Hart at Khan Academy:  http://www.khanacade.../math/vi-hart?k


I also want to invite the kids to bring in some nature "finds" that they are interested in sharing with the class.

A year or two ago on some website--maybe PBS or something... they had this science teacher who brought science to her students through drawing.  I WISH, WISH, WISH I had written down her name...It would be really neat to show them her short video to give them a cool idea.
-I searched around and found her: Caryn Babaian: Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers on PBS!!!! Maybe I can link her super-short clip and you can see her black board drawings - it only shows it for 5 seconds; but it was enough to really captivate me and I'll always remember it:
http://www.pbs.org/w.../caryn-babaian/

I had shown this class some cool "nature Journals" that I have -- but I will bring them in again--  we are not allowed to give students "homework" in this class; but it would be cool if one of them got the idea or inspiration to do some nature journal-ling from this class....

Okay, so the first class with quickly go over Classification--not to memorize; but to know that it exists and is something to be aware of.

I've already found my section from "Who Is God?" from Apologia.

And we will make our sketch books and then draw some BUGS.  The first class will focus on Insects.  I have some actual (dead) bugs that I just happen to have in my collection....You all have collections of dead bugs too, right?!  And I have printed out a few of the easiest pages from my book entitled "How To Draw Insects" (2 copies of each bug).  And a print-out of a drawing of a "typical insect" that is all diagrammed: wings, abdomen, compound eye, thorax, ocellus, antenna, mandible, labrum, maxilla and maxillary palp, labium and labial palp, coxa, trochanter, tibia, tarsus, femur, spiracle, claw, ovipositor...

We can have a class on:
TREES
LEAVES
SEEDS
SHELLS
FOSSILS
BIRDS

and of course, we have to have a class on Fibonnaci! somehow, someway...not sure how.  If I had internet access in the classroom, I could SHOW them the video.  I may ask if I can take them out of the classroom, to an area that has Wi-Fi....hmmm.

Class 1: - Sept. 12, 2012

I can't sleep b/c I have some things that I need to write down before I forget :
I didn't make clear; I don't think that each dc write in their journal that typical bugs have 3 segments-head, thorax, abdomen.  Maybe at the beginning of next class we go to that page in their journal and make sure that is identified and written in their books.

I did NOT bring my Nature Journal to class to show them.  Not that it is mine; but the one I bought that is my visual goal for the future when I can actually do one myself.  I do have some nature journal entries in some of my drawing journals--maybe I could bring in those with post-it's to specifically show that?  I can't think of her name right now--claire, leslie. something like that.  I have that book in a bag of books that I *was* going to bring; but then thought I had too many books picked out to bring---which was correct thinking on my part, b/c we did NOT get to any books on the first class.

What we did in class 1:

• Showed and discussed the "Classification Chart" (Kingdom, Phylum, ...) I had a nice, big POSTER!!!  I made it; and it was well done- not artistic, though.

• Discussed how God is The Artist of the World

• We made our own sketch books.  I had each student prepared with a spot at their seats with a threaded large needle, qty 4- 12x18 sheets of drawing paper, thimble, pencils, and scissors (to share).  This took a lot longer than I thought it would actually.

• Then I passed out some print-outs I had made from my "How to Draw Insects" books, so that each students could pick a page to have for themselves to draw off of.  I taped the printed pages onto thick cardstock so it would be sturdy for the students.  I had hoped that we would have time to do a few different drawings; but we only had time for one drawing.

• At the end of the class the students got a quick chance to look at the home-made shadow box of some bug examples (or you could say -case of interesting dead bugs).

Should I take a democratic vote and see if they want to come back to insects again, since we only had 5-10 minutes on them b/c the sketch books took so much time?  I know I am fascinated by bugs; but are they??? They might want to move on.

I brought in an old glass pickle jar---the big, tall kind that you have to reach your whole arm into to get the pickles on the bottom--filled with fennel and about 1/2 of our black swallowtail caterpillars for the kids to draw.  Well, they LOVED seeing that.  They didn't get a chance to draw them b/c we ran out of time; but they REALLY loved seeing them.   At the picnic after classes; one little boy seriously wanted me give him one to take home.  Really!  He was dead set on getting one.  I would have, if he had the right food for them; but they only eat dill, or fennel foliage (that I have memorized).  He was really cute; maybe 5-6 years old and FULL of determination.


Class 2: 9-20-12:
Trees, leaves, and review of bugs
I will review some of the drawing lessons we learned in our last class--shading, design--where to place the image on the page/size of item on page...
I am going to do some fun drawing exercises in the beginning of the class; like I did in the last drawing class.  I don't remember the exact drawing exercises we did last year; so I thought maybe I should type out what I do this time, so I can have it for next time.
Drawing Games: ( from the Keeping A Nature Journal book listed above)
Blind Contour: without looking at your paper at all, keeping your eyes only on your object "trace" in a continuous line across your paper --don't look, lift your pencil or stop until you have drawn all lines, outlines, markings, bristles, veins,...and so on.  You can go around the form from left to right or right to left; just complete the form.  Go slowly and look very carefully at your form.  Don't peek at your paper!  Think of yourself as a spider threading out a line.  Complete in one to two minutes.

Modified Contour: Draw the same form that you made the blind contour of, allowing yourself to look at at the paper, but be sure you do not lift your pencil off the paper.  Draw with one continuous unwinding line, as before.  Go slowly and stop only when you feel you have fully read your object.  Complete in one to two minutes.  Compare the blind and modified contour drawings.  Do you prefer one to the other?  You may find a confident and strong line and a form surprisingly like what you are observing.

Quick Gesture Sketches:
This technique is very useful for field artists because much of what we draw moves quickly!  Looking at your paper and the object at the same time, lifting your pencil as needed, now scribble down the whole form as fast as you can for five seconds, then try doing it in ten seconds, finally, take fifteen seconds to get your sketch down.  Try to get the major sense of the form by looking hard and drawing the large, identifiable shapes.  You are getting the 'essence' of what you see.

Diagrammatic Drawing:
This technique is useful when you spot something you want to identify, but you don't have a field guide with you, can't take a specimen home, or are with a group that's hiking too fast for you to linger.  We call these "Proof-in-court drawings,because they can prove invaluable evidence of things seen but not collected.  This is the most common technique used by beginning nature journalists.
     Make a simple line drawing, as if for a field guide identification.  Add written notes of the objects size, color, shape, and name if you know it.  Record enough to help you identify it later.  Complete in three to five minutes.

Finished Drawing:
Use this technique to produce a more complete drawing.  now add VOLUME, SHADING, and the various surface details of the shell, leaf, banana, or whatever it is you are drawing.  Often these lengthier drawings are done indoors from photographs, or from animals that do not move very much--you may use one of the sketches from your journal as a basic reference for a finished drawing.  What begins as a quick sketch may end up as a finished drawing if, for example, the cow lies down, or the hen stalks closer.  But, more often, the desired finished drawing ends as a half-sketch.


Class 3: 9-27-12:
**Spirals in Nature - Leonardo Fibonacci - Grid Art -

 

Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci by Joseph D'Agnese and John O'Brien

  We read "Blockhead: the life of Fibonacci".  This book gives a little creative biography on the life of Leonard Fibonacci.  Since he lived in Medieval times in Pisa, Italy a lot of solid information is in short supply.  But, I liked sharing that he as a real person and mathmatican that figured out the formula for the spirals in nature--which is pretty amazing!

We watched the video of Vi Hart (part one of three on Fibonacci from Khan Academy.org or youtube.com) explaining the spirals and how to make the spirals yourself with a pencil and a sheet of graph paper. 

I placed the first two squares on graph paper (in the most ideal spot so the kids would be able to have a successful drawing), and gave each student their own piece to make the spiral.  Most of the kids got the spiral pretty quickly.  It was clear some of the kids really liked the video of Vi Hart and seeing the spirals found on pineapples, flowers, fruits, broccoli, sunflowers, etc. etc.  On my first attempt at home, I put my first squares in the middle of the page, which made it impossible to do the whole formation Vi was getting us to do.  So, the next time I started my first squares up towards the top---and success!

Then I briefly went over "Grid Art".  I showed how you can make a grid or buy a clear plastic with a grid already on it to make drawings of things already flat (like a photo or a drawing or picture from a book) and get it perfectly in size/proportion.  I had been wanting to show them this cool little trick since last class.  I remember seeing it in high school, and thinking, 'Why didn't someone show me this years ago!'

  Class 4: 10-10-12

Dd made 9 new sketch books.  I had planned on the students making a second sketch book to add extra pages to their first sketch book; but we really don't have enough time in class to have them do this project.  So, Dd made the 9 sketch books, for the 9 students in the class and then I sewed the new books to the old books and made their books double in size.  

BUGS- I had a dry-erase board with a bug drawn on it, with a line drawn down the middle of it.  This was to point out that bugs have bilateral symmetry.  That they are the same on both sides.  I also drew a camera and 4 rectangles on the board.  The camera was to teach them that how they place the image they are drawing on the paper is similar to how we naturally pose an object within our lens when we are taking pictures.  We wouldn't take a picture of a bug from 30 feet away or it would be itty-bitty and we would not see the bug--and 3 of the rectangles on the board had various examples of bad "picture taking".  The drawn bug within the rectangle represented drawing a bug on a piece of paper; where the bug in only a tiny speck in the corner of the big empty page.  Then the fourth rectangle had a bug, of nice proportion, drawn - filling up most of the page. 

 I thought using "taking a picture with a camera" for arranging the bug drawing on the page as a metaphor.  I hope this might be one that the kids could relate to better than saying artsy words that don't mean anything to them at this stage.

I had 3 tables for bugs, and one table for trees.  There is always one student who doesn't want to do what everyone else is doing!  At the 3 bug tables, I had 2-3 trays with dead bugs on trays for them to see and draw if they wanted a 3D image.  I also had 5-8 zerox copies of various bug drawings for them to copy into their sketch books.

Each of the 3 tables had different trays of bugs and different zerox drawings of bugs.  I have a cool book "How to Draw Bugs" that is perfect for this class.  It shows a step by step process how to draw many different kinds of bugs.  It makes it very easy and do-able.

I always have one station in the room that is full of books on the subject-picture books-classifications--field guides--DK books, etc. for the students to either look at, read, or get an idea of something to draw from the book.  So far, I don't think any of the students have taken the books back to their table to draw from-but they do have that option.

I had the students rotate to a new table after 10 minutes, if they wanted to try something else.  I also asked each student to make one MESSY drawing.  I saw each student working so hard to be "perfect" and exact with their drawings, I really wanted to force them to have fun for a few minutes and scribble and use force and really experiment a little on the page.  Make some really dark spots and some light area's and be un-perfect! 

At the beginning and end of the class we discussed what they wanted to do for the next class---and after many ideas; we finally agreed on Flowers as our next class.  We will also use charcoals to draw the flowers with...this should be fun and messy.  I asked them all to wear dark, old shirts. 

 

Class 5 "FLOWERS"  10-18-12

The concept we discussed/taught was on "Composition".  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!

Then I showed them the drawing I had done the night before of a diagrammic drawing of a flower from a book.  My point in this exercise was to show them a)composition b)background from my imagination to liven up the drawing.  I've been seeing a lot of floating bugs from the last class.

Next, I showed them a quick demonstration on how to use charcoals.

Then, I told them the sections of books I brought in and placed in the back of the room-- if they wanted to look at the books as one of their stations.  Since our class was on FLOWERS, I brought in artists who also focused on flowers-like Vincent Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keefe, Monet, and an artist-slash-naturalist John James Audubon. I also brought in illustrated books on plants and flowers.  I had chosen to do my drawing from one of the books on flowers.

Then we started our stations.  I had 4 students go immediately to the table I had set up for charcoals.  I had 4 Styrofoam trays with compressed charcoal and vine charcoal, and a 'chunk' of compressed charcoal, a clean piece of paper, and a xeroxed drawing of a flower at each spot.  I gave the students the option of choosing a different image than the one at their place; but I believe most students were happy with the image provided.  After about 10-15 minutes I had the students rotate so the other groups could have a turn at the charcoal table.  The other students had been at the pencil drawing and colored pencil drawing tables.  They were drawing in their sketch book with either graphite pencils or colored pencils.  

I think most students did 1-2 drawings by the end of class.  This class is suppose to be 45 minutes; but they often arrive a little late.  Then they have to help put everything away and take all the supplies out to the hall for me, so the next teacher can set up for her class as we are exiting...it is a rush of a class. 

 

Class 6: "Micro Life" 10-25-12

On the dry-erase board I had a drawing of a tree with 5 big branches.  Each branch had written on it one of the branches of life. (Find book and put title and amazon link here).  The book has the 5 branches of life listed as:

I made Xerox copies of some very interesting drawings from a book (insert book here) showing microscopic life from various branches.

My emphasis was again on seeing an image and figuring out placement on the white page.  Seeing the direction and shape of the tubes and how and where they point off the page and drawing that.

I had made 4 example sketches to show the class.  I took 4 of the microscopic drawings and 4 clean drawing papers and used a vine charcoal to find placement of the major shapes.  I held up the original drawings from the book beside my sketches to show the students how I worked at finding the right placement and shapes.

In the beginning of the class I went over the purpose of this class—to see how amazing God is as the artist of the world and all his millions of creations we see all around us.  From living things-bugs, flowers, plants, trees….to dead things-shells, rocks, fossils… and how we can use drawing as a method of getting to understand these things better.  How we can draw to comprehend science better—anatomy, geography,…

Also before we started drawing I asked the students what their favorite parts were of the class and the majority stated the Fibonnaci class was their favorite.  A few stated the flowers class, and 2 students said the charcoal classes.

TREES:
do the kids know that we can identify what tree is what by their leaf?  I would think so; but I could bring in some examples of 5 basic leaves from our planned hike on Sunday.  I could tape down a pin oak leaf to a white piece of paper and write "Pin Oak" and do the same for a few different leaves that I gather on our walk.  Of course, I will have to TRY to find a sycamore leaf that isn't as big as a plate, so it can fit on our piece of paper.  It would be very cool to attach it's seed to the leaf page too.  I only have a few seeds here--but I could do a few.  So, they could see exactly what I mean.  I won't try with bark; but I could just TELL them that the bark is also particular to each tree.

Types of tree by duration of their leaves:
Deciduous Trees vs Evergreen---this one is probably the easiest to remember.  Does the tree keep it's leaves throughout the year, or does it's leaves 'fall' in the fall?

Types of trees depending on whether they flower or not:
Flowerless vs Trees with flowers (angiosperms)
    with flowers- can be separated into groups: monocotyledons(single cotyledon)  and dicots (two cotyledons)----this one is okay; but not really that exciting to me.

Types of trees depending or according to their branching--now this one is interesting b/c it really defines HOW you are going to draw a tree.  Is is going to be a triangle like the the **Monopodial Trees?  Their growth is caused by the elongation of the main stem and are more or less in the shape of a triangle (so the snow can easily fall off them).   Their is also the most popular branching type-the **Simpodial trees-there is NOT a main stem that extends through the end of the tree, but two or more main branches arising from the end of the trunk from axillary buds(2) are not from the terminal bud (1).

FLOWERS:
The last image in my head that wouldn't let me sleep was the view of a hibiscus cut in half with all the parts diagrammed.  The kids should not the parts of a flower.  Should flowers be included on the same day as trees?

NOTES:
I asked both leaders of LHE and they were happy for the kids to see the Vi Hart video's on the Fibonacci sequence.  So, that issue is fine.  I need to take my laptop next week and see if I get reception in classroom--people mentioned I might be able to.  I will see.

Right now the pendulum is leaning more towards "Science" than "Art"; but I wanted the kids to feel like they were getting something different than the last class with me.  I met one of the kids in Dd's class, at the "Kick-Off Picnic" last Sunday and when their mom told them I was teaching another nature/art class his comment was "we just had a art class with her"; so I feel like I need to make sure I am adding something new to this class than "just drawing".  

Notes: 9-16-2012

new idea- would it be fun to bring in 5-6 basic leaves and put them at a table with 3-4 tree identification books/fieldguides and let each group figure out what tree the leaf came from?  They could trace the outline of the leaf onto a page in their journal and write the name of the tree it belongs to under it, for their own reference.

Notes: 9-19-2012

I am going to try to start focusing more on the Nature Journal.  I think I have put in enough Science info into my brain that I can share with them along the way; but I don't want to lose sight of the real target.

The book I am using to help me with the is program:

 

Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth

Suggestions for next class:

Have drawings/sketches/examples for each class to show students ideas of what they could do.  I didn’t think of this until the 4^th class and wish I would have done it all along.  I should start making drawings of all of these Xerox images NOW in preparation for the next class.