These are the drawing techniques we practice:
- Observational Drawing
- Drawing from Memory
- Contour Line Drawing
- Blind Contour Line Drawing
- Modified Contour Drawing
- Gesture Drawing
- Upside down Drawing
- Gridded Drawing
- Value Scales
- Shading Shapes into Forms
I love the drawing unit so much, because I find that students who think they can't draw very well end up drawing much better than they thought they could!
Every day during the drawing unit, students are required to do a drawing warm-up. The drawing warm-up is practicing drawing from memory and helps build observation skills. Outside my classroom door on a table sits a different still life that is set up for them to look at and try and memorize. Every day through the unit, the still life gets a bit harder. The students are to look carefully at the still life and then go in to the classroom and draw the still life in their sketchbook from memory. While they are drawing their warm up, I ask questions about the still life. Questions like, "What was the shape of the bottom of the vase?" or "Was the tip of the boot pointing to the left or the right?". The students love these questions and it gets them to observe them to pay attention to details a bit more. This exercise I think not only helps in drawing, but helps with observational skills that they use everyday.
Here are the pages from the drawing packet :