Charcoal Water Droplet Drawing

This was a quick lesson I did with a Grade 7-9 class. It took 40 minutes to complete. I demonstrated the different qualities of different types of charcoal, then showed the how to shade a realistic looking water droplet. 

There are lots of tutorials on Youtube if you'd prefer to show a video. 

We used the following types of charcoal: compressed, vine, and charcoal pencils (black and white).

They toned their white drawing paper first with vine charcoal blended out. Then they traced a circle on top (we used plastic lids and yoghurt containers as tracers). Students could do one or more than one. Draw a curved highlight at the top. Add some dark charcoal at the top then blend it downwards in a curved fashion. 

Always blend with the shape of the form. 

End with white charcoal/chalk pastel to touch up all the highlights.

*NOTE: some students have sensory issues with charcoal, so I always have soft tissues/kleenex available- they just wrap their finger around that. 

This is a super messy project and charcoal gets all over the kids and their clothes, so you've been warned! Allow at least 10 minutes for clean-up as the kids take forever to wash their hands at the sink!! I will say most of my students absolutely hate using charcoal and chalk pastels, ESPECIALLY my high school students!

This lesson had a pretty high success rate with students. 

It's a good introduction to shading a sphere!

 

Positive Negative Space Plant Drawing

This was a wonderful drawing lesson my second practicum student taught to a mixed class of Grade 7-9 students last month. It was well received among students and yielded a high success rate!

I believe she found the inspo for the project HERE (via Pinterest). 

After her demonstration and explanation of positive and negative space, students looked up an image of a houseplant (some chose flowers) online.

They drew a contour line drawing (no shading) of this on 8 x 11" cardstock. 

Once drawn, they drew a dividing line across the entire image anywhere they wanted- they used a ruler for this step, but some students chose a wavy line. 

They decided which one was their negative space side and outlined that in Sharpie, then coloured the rest in pure black. No lines or details or shading was done on the positive part of that side. 

Just completely black and white.

Once the negative space side was complete, they used painters tape to tape down the negative space side a bit so it wouldn't get any charcoal pencil on it. then they shaded in the positive space side using charcoal pencils. 

I love the variety of these and how beautifully they turned out!

 

Maya Glyphs in Charcoal

Starting today I'm going to try and post art lessons that use simple and/or minimal supplies, to help those of us who are teaching from home (including me!)

This lesson only requires charcoal and some type of drawing paper. It helps if you have white chalk pastels as well for shading.

I introduced my Grade 7-9 students to the ancient Maya civilization. I showed them a map of the world where they are located as well as some images of their glyphs. I also showed the video below:

I created handout from images I found online of Maya glyphs and their translations. Students could also choose to write their name as per instructions in THIS PDF file. 

First they sketched out their glyph(s) onto grey construction paper.

I did a demo on the different types of charcoal (vine, conte and compressed) and let them choose between conte or compressed. I also showed them how to shade these to make them look like carved glyphs. 

They fill in the center areas with white then outline them with black or brown and then blend it all together using their fingers or a blending stump.

Charcoal does erase and I recommend that you keep specific erasers separate just for charcoal and chalk pastels projects- mine were so dirty afterwards, lol

Some finished Grade 7-9 artworks- our school shut down mid project!