Assessing Growth in Drawing

How can I draw what I see?

• Look for Contour Families: line, curve, angle, circle and dot. 
• Air draw
• 'Imagine draw' when you need to overlap
• Look closely... even when you think you're done! 

At the beginning of the year, each student at GWA from Grades KG2-Grade 5 was asked to do their best drawing in 10 minutes. They had to draw a of a pot of art supplies. They reflected on their work and set goals for how they would improve in drawing this year.

Here are some of the drawings and reflections from Grade 3: 

And very focused Grade 4s: 

How can forces help us create art?

Grade 2 students explored how force can help us draw. They created very light lines and dark lines by varying the amount of force they used when drawing.

Their observational drawings included thick dark lines made with a lot of force and thin light lines made with a little force. 

When done, we turned on our imaginations and transformed the machines into characters with google eyes! What fun! 

Grade 3-5 Homework

As Grade 3,4 and 5 students finish up this week, they have been told that their homework is to draw, draw and draw, over the next 10 weeks and summer break! Here, 3KR is doing a practice contour drawing. They are getting much better at using thin and thick lines!

Remember:
-Look for dots, circles, straight lines, curved lines and angles!
-Draw slowly. Your pencil should move over the paper as your eye moves over the object.

And have fun!

To become good at drawing you must practice!

Drawing Animals: Geometric Shapes to Organic Shapes

Grade 3 students are busy at work in their home room classes, completing an ecosystems project. To support this end of unit project, students are developing their drawing skills in Visual Art class. Knowing how to observe animals carefully to find shapes will help them to design their comics, murals and dioramas. Take a look at some of their practice drawings. Students all agreed that this lesson was challenging, but everyone felt proud of their accomplishments by the end of class. Great job Grade 3!

Tree-ish

  KG2 students enjoyed Peter H. Reynolds book, Ish, in class today. It's a story that celebrates creativity and helps us understand that not everyone sees things in the same way.

Later in our class students examined a bonsai tree very closely. They touched the leaves, the soil, the bark and twigs. They also looked carefully to identify curved lines, straight lines, angles and circles. When they went away to draw, the KG2 students kept their eyes on the tree and looked very carefully. Below are a few examples of their work. 

They decided to title it this project Tree-ish :) -A great title, I think. 

Although some students think that their drawings look very realistic. What do you think?

These drawings took about 15 minutes.

Students loved using charcoal to draw in their art books.

Students touch the tree to identify different kinds of lines.

These guys tried white chalk on black paper.

It's a Portrait Party!

As a grand finale to our portrait unit, Grade 4AK students had a portrait party in class today. Students visited tables with many different drawing tools and different kinds of papers and took turns drawing each other posing for 2-4 minute intervals. Each student completed at least 5 different portraits of their friends.

The rules were:
1. Relax and have fun!
2. OBSERVE! Look more at the model. Not the paper!
3. Try to capture the emotion.

The amazing thing about this lesson was that everyone could see their own improvement over such a short time. Great work Grade 4!

 A few reflections:
-I learned that I can draw better when I look at the subject very carefully -just one line at a time.
-I learned that every portrait doesn't have to look exactly the same as the person.
-I learned how quickly I can draw.
-I learned how much fun you can have in art.
-I learned that I am getting better at drawing!