animals in black and white



At the end of first semester 8th graders spend a bit of time on animal value studies.  Above are a few that have made it into the hallway display case.   We do a value drawing in pencil and then a scratch board drawing of the same creature.  It is really neat to see students "get into" their drawings!

Students choose a copy of an animal from a magazine.  We then add charcoal to the back of the copy and transfer the lines, shapes and swatches of value to their drawing paper by drawing over the copy.  I suppose you could call this cheating, but most 8th graders would not be able to draw their creature free hand at this point in their artistic development, so this gives them the confidence to move past this obstacle.  The lesson is geared more toward students understanding the concept of value and how to render this in their drawings. 

Above is the animal in the three stages, the copy,
the scratch art, and the value drawing.



We watch some clips from a video on drawing animals and talk about creating an underlayer of value and then applying the texture of the fur, applying pencil marks in the length of the fur, in the direction it grows, and in the value level that it is on the copy.

 

After finishing the value drawings, students transfer their copy again to a scratch art paper and now have to remove certain amounts of black to get the different values of the fur.  This takes a new look at the same concept with a using a different technique.