Art Reflection #2

Introducing Drawing to Children

If last week was bad, this week was killer tiring. This class was once again very relaxing and informative, unfortunately I was hacking and sniffling, and just wanted to go home. However, I did get stuff done, and we took a very cool walk to the UBC Botanical Gardens. The drawing exercises that we attempted today are used for introducing children and adults to drawing.

1. The first exercise was to find an object, turn away and draw it from MEMORY:
(Unfornuately, I have misplaced this drawing of a leaf :)
I found this exercise to be the most frustrating as I just wanted to always turn around and take a quick peek. Half way through the drawing exercise I felt like giving up, because I knew that I could draw it better when I was using observation. Eventually I found myself speeding the exercise along, and thus moved onto the next exercise.

2. The Second exercise was to do a BLIND CONTOUR DRAWING:

I loved this exercise. The exercise requires that the artist keeps the pencil to the paper, and his/her eyes on the object. They are never allowed to look at their paper until the exercise is over. In my eyes, it made things that were beautiful even more beautiful. The object that I chose was that of a pink flower. It was a beautiful flower, and when I saw the outcome of my drawing I thought at first "man, I really screwed that up!". Yet, as soon as the words entered my mind a passerby said "wow, that is a really nice interpretation!". (me blushing)
What I also found interesting is that when doing the exercise I had a tremendous amount of confidence that what I was doing was going to look very accurate. I am sure that with practice it can be possible to get more accurate, but for now it has made me appreciate more the combination of my sense working together. Take too much for granted.

3. The third exercise was to TRACE an object:

This I found was the most simple of the exercises. It required that you place an object underneath a clear overhead sheet, and trace it. I chose a leaf with many veins and chunks missing out of its sides. This exercise I also found that I had the most control. What I also found neat was that really start to notice the amount of detail and patterns in nature. Very cool.

4. The fourth exercise was a MINI TRACE of an object:

This exercise is the same as number three except that the overhead sheet is extremely small (size of a photo slide). This exercise was simple and addictive. I did about three of these in five minutes. Once again, it's amazing how much detail and weird patterns that are in nature.

5. The fifth exercise was to rub pencil over an object to get TEXTURE:

This was the last exercise, and by this time my head was pounding, and my nose was constantly running, and so I admittedly rushed this exercise. However, it does show texture that is found within a leaf. Some of the other people in the classroom did some excellent texture rubbing on rock surfaces and wood surfaces. The exercise made me think how our ancestors might have used this technique to do an early method of 'photocopying'.