Nature in Art Spring 2013

As much as it may seem pointless to reinvent the wheel; there is always someone who has to go and try to do just that!  That's me!  I've been working and smoke has been coming out my ears for weeks now trying to improve the class I taught last semester...but, I'm not sure any of the thinking and reading has actually accumulated to any new improvements!  So what do I have to show for the hours of self-torment???  nothing really...but, I guess it must be part of my process.  I just really want the class to be great; for the students to learn a lot and to have fun while doing it---is that possible?  I will try.

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!

Then I showed them the drawing I had done the night before of a diagrammatic 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.

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.

 Class 3: Micro Life

Set up--each place has pencil sets (HB, 3B, 5B, 6B), erasers (kneaded & vinyl), 3 pieces of loose paper, 2-4 seashells (for blind contour drawing exercises), 2-3 Drawing/Zerox to copy--- I got the drawings from this book:

 

The Microcosmos Coloring Book by Lynn Margulis, Christie Lyons and Dorion Sagan

 The students bring their sketch books back to each class.  I encouraged the students to draw more in their sketch books today and document their drawings.  After a short discussion about how cool things microscopic are, we headed into doing our drawing warm-up exercises.  I showed a few photographs of microscopic images that were/are amazing to show how awesome microscopic images can be.

 

Drawing exercises:

1)Stand Up!  Stand up and draw vertical lines across the whole page.  Then draw diagonal lines across the page (on top of the vertical lines).  Then draw vertical rows of circles/spheres up and down the page, use your whole body and whole arm to draw.

2)Dual-Handed, whole-brain- Mirror drawings.  Start by putting a pencil in each hand, and then you will have each hand mirror what the other hand is doing,  start in the middle of the page and the right pencil will stay on the right side of the page and the left pencil will stay on the left side of the page.  Both pencils will stay down and flow through the drawing in sync with the other hand.

3) repeated drawing 2

4)2 Handed Flow--seperate directions for each hand.  A pencil in each hand; but each pencil / each hand will do it's own thing and 'dance' together in it's own thing/pattern.  This is hard to do!!!!  They want to keep copying each other!  The page (for me) really turned into a big MESS!

5)"Turkey" drawing/Value Scale drawings --I had the students draw a small oval with 6B, then go 3/4th of the way around the oval with a HB pencil--like tail feathers on a turkey, then another row of feathers with a 3B, then another row of feathers on top of that row with a 5B.  We just did some single and double and triple cross hatching lines to see how light & dark we can make it with each pencil.

6)Blind Contour Drawings with the Seashells on their tables.  Without looking at their paper - at ALL! they were to draw the seashell of their choosing (from the selection on their table).  This seemed to be difficult; b/c I did see some students looking!!

7)repeat the Blind Contour drawings, for a total of 3 of these.

8)Negative Space Drawing with a seashell. I had the students draw a rectangle on their page--about a 6 inch by 4 inch rectangle; to keep it small.  Pick a seashell and draw the contour of that shell inside the rectangle.  Then draw the background in with dark crosshatching strokes; so the back ground is dark and the seashell is light.

Then the students had 20-25 minutes for their extended drawing.  They had 3 choices: 1) draw from the Zerox images I had placed on each table of microscopic life. 2) Draw from the Stereo Microscope I brought in. 3) Draw from one of the two microscopes that Ms. P. brought in.  I think 2 students used the microscopes to draw from.

What I noticed---the students really did some great extended drawings from the Zerox pages I had provided!!! WoW! They looked really great.  The composition looked great on every page I saw.  It was really nice for me to see the students really do a nice drawing and have a little bit of time to actually get into the drawing a little bit.

What I did right--I took Ms. P's advise and spent longer on the drawing warm up exercises.  I might have gone a little over in my talking before the drawing started; but I hadn't gone over some basic art ideas that I wanted to share with them yet and I took this week as an opportunity to do so.

  What didn't work--the microscopes were not a big hit.  The books-- I brought a bunch of very cool books on micro life; were not picked up at all.  They really don't care about looking at the books.  The good news; they just want to draw!!

  Class 4: Bugs

I really, really like bugs--- I just had to say that first and foremost.  Now I can talk about our class! 

 Prep for the class:

1. Collage of well drawn bugs from books I own:  I had cut & pasted small drawings of bugs to make a sheet of paper with a good assortment of bugs on it.  Then I made 3 more of these assortment pages.  Each table got about 3 different options of these collage pages.

 2. I have a book called something like 'Draw Bugs'.  I Zeroxed out about 6-8 different bugs pages from this book.  This book is great in showing the student HOW to draw bugs.  I really like how easy they make it.

 3. I made numerous copies of all of the above 2 items so that each table would have 5-6 sheets of possible images to draw from.  

4. I filled up two big canvas bags with bug books for the students to look through and have as an option for drawing.

5. I brought in Sharpie markers for the students to have to draw bugs with too (besides just the pencils).

6. I have 4-5 table set up with apples and banana still-life for our Contour drawing exercises.  I had 4-5 tables set up with blue glass and seashell still-life's too.

 7. Each table had 1-2 small trays with 1-4 bugs on available for the students to draw from.

Each students 'spot' had a set of pencils in a rubber band, erasers, 2 sheets of scratch paper for warm up exercises, the still life (apples/banana's or blue glass-seashells), the tray with a bug, a magnifying glass to look at the bugs with, 1-3 different types of black markers/pens.

 

The class begins:

warm-up exercises: 

Stand Up and do the vertical lines across page, then diagonals across / on top of that, then the circles on top of that. 

Dual handed- two handed 'mirror' drawing--1-2 minutes, repeat. 

Dual handed, but each hand working individually drawing.

Blind Contour with still-life from their table - NO looking at their drawing page, repeat.

Blind Contour again, but can glimpse 2 times, then on next drawing they can glimpse 3 times.  This ends warm ups.

BUG drawing time!!!  30 minutes for this.  The choices are: 1) They can draw the real bugs at their table.  2)They can draw from the many images I printed off and put on their table.  3)They can come over to the book table and pick out a book that they want to draw from.

   

  Class 5: Spirals in Nature: Fibonacci

This was a fun class, but I don't think I really planned it as well as it could have been planned.  Two things could have happened-either/or.... I could have really ampted up the excitement about the students getting to bring in their own still-life more.  Only some of the kids brought in something.  I asked for them to bring in 2-4 items and most brought in 1-2 little, tiny things, or one semi-small thing-like one shell.  I asked them to bring in one spiral shell AND a still-life set.  Maybe if I had set it up like: "Hey, guys...this is YOUR class to bring in something really fun and neat to draw and YOU get to choose it!!!!!" maybe, just maybe they would have been more inclined to bring in something more than they did????  I don't know???  One student's mom told her to bring in a pineapple b/c she knew we were doing Fibonacci and how relevant that would be....and I gave her a prize!!

Or maybe I should have bought glitter glue and let the kids do the spirals on a pine cone and used the whole class on that???  I don't know, you could spend some time on doing the activities from the Vi Hart dvd/clip we watched today.  I was surprised to see 2 students doing 2 of the pine cone drawings from the clip during our extended drawing time.

What did I NOT do well?  I must not be a good motivator to encourage the students to bring in things or I am not use to teenagers.  But, what I did well--is that I KNEW they wouldn't be bringing in stuff and I brought in things for them as my back-ups (so glad I do that).  I still don't have a great sense of how the class is going, to be honest.  The students are doing well with drawing during the class.  The drawings from the still life's today weren't as good as the drawings from the Xeroxes of Bugs & Micro-life.  It seems they do well with transferring data from page to page.  **One thing I did notice today, that would be a good teaching point, was that some of the students weren't fully using the page.  They were drawing a small tiny seashell  that was eaten up by all the vast white space on the page.  The student could have really used a hint or two about using the WHOLE page and filling up the space.  Their little shell seemed so lost and lonely on the page.  That would be a good thing to mention to the group; although some students do know how to use their whole space. Drawing exercises-we did our Stand UP  drawing; but we did it a little differently today than usual.  I had the students make a big circle in the middle of their page, with it being so big that it touches the top and bottom of the page, and,  then on top of that they did diagonals across the page one way, then the other way, then horizontal horizontaltal lines all across to finish the drawing.  Then a few more of our normal drawing exercises--see previous days.  I went over who Leonardo Fibonacci was by partly reading this book:

 

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

 Then we watched the Vi Hart clip on Fibonacci.

 http://vihart.com/

Then we did our  extended drawings - either from things they brought in or from the pine cones, sunflowers, seashells, snail shells that I brought in as back-up.

  Class 6: Animals in Nature: the last class!

I had the tables set up with vases of dried flowers--each table had one or two vases.  Each table had a tray of my own interesting nature specimens--some tiny pine cones, some peony bloom cores, some seeds, acorns....etc etc.  We always do blind contour drawings or draw the objects I bring in upside down as part of our warm-up exercises so I like to have different options for the students to choose from.  I had to make 12 arrangements--which was particularly time consuming to me- but fun too...but messy!  dried flowers sure do make a big mess!  I'm glad I don't have a mom around telling me what a mess I'm making!

I Zeroxed images of rabbits, squirrels, and birds all week.  The images I had in books didn't work as well as the images I found in "Google- Images".  That is the first time I've used Google-Images; and it was really fun to look through the options available.  I think I had almost 60 Zeroxes!!!!  Geesh!!  Last class I asked the students if they wanted to have the last class on tree and tree things like I had planned or if they wanted to offer suggestions instead.  They came up with Landscapes, 3D, or animals.  We voted and animals won.  Then they picked rabbits, squirrels, and birds for us to focus on.  I needed them to narrow down the topic of animals into something more specific for me.  

 I brought in a LOT of books on animals too.  Some of the males in the class mentioned "wolves", so I brought in some books I have on wolves--plus lots of other books on animals.

I asked the students some questions regarding the class and what they liked/didn't like/learned/didn't learn/would like to learn in the future.  It really didn't reveal too much.  But, it was interesting to hear what the students said they learned.

We did our warm up exercises and then did our extended drawing time working on either the objects I brought in, or objects they brought in, or drawing from the books, or drawing from the Zeroxes I made.

That ended that class!