Easter treats Still Life Lesson

 In these videos you will learn about drawing a still life!

1.Grab some of your treats from Easter or a stuffy and some things
2. arrange them so that some things are in front and some things are behind (overlapping)
3. draw whatever is up front and closest to you first
4. draw whatever is directly behind the front item noticing where the line begins and ends on the item in front to create overlapping
5. draw whatever is in the very back now
6. Add shadows and highlights where you see them
7. color or paint your creation using different dark and light shades of each color

 

Still Life: Shoes

Last month, my students did a still life project of their shoes. The success rate was HUGE and they learned a lot about drawing from life, Emphasis, and Rhythm.



The key to their success was trying to train their mind to draw with their eyes! We started with a contour line of their shoe from TWO different view points that looked something like below. An outline of what they see with NOTHING in the middle. Then they use that as a reference to fill in the lines for the rest of the shoe.

We talked about how to listen to your eyes, not your mind. For instance, their mind says to draw a circle for the laces holes, but in reality it is a “C” shape because the lace overlaps the circle. 

Then we learned about EMPHASIS
I asked them what was emphasis and showed them some photos of how emphasis can be created with..
Clarity Texture
Light Line
Color
Space/Shape/composition
Then when I asked if the shoes would still have emphasis if they colored them the same color as the background. They said no because they would blend in and camoflage.


Their backgrounds had to have PATTERN and also create RHYTHM

Spring into Life, Still Life Drawing!

Today we went on a nature walk in our courtyard to find some wild flowers for a still life. We found/rescued  this little monarch caterpillar and gave him some milk weed to hang out on for a while so we could draw him before we placed him in our school garden.

the students enjoyed getting outside to find all kinds of plants and wild flowers

we placed the flora (and fauna) in tp tubes to help get a better point of view

this little plant was my favorite…not sure what it is…

Fruit Plate Still Lifes

For this project, I bought real fruit and put it on each table on a paper plate. We talked about how to draw the fruit overlapping by starting with the closest fruit first. I told them to reach out their hand and whatever fruit would touch their finger first would be the one to start with. Then, when drawing the next fruit, the line would start on the first fruit even if they weren't really touching. We talked about how everyone's drawings will look different because of point of veiw. We talked about how the plate would start on one fruit and end on another and you wouldn't see a big circle for a plate unless you were drawing the picture while hanging from the ceiling. Then we practiced blending colors from dark to light. I put a lamp on each table and they had to draw little ovals where the "shiney's" (reflections) were. Those were to be colored white. Here are some finished products.