The Gusserane Art Intervention: Week 5

This week in Gusserane Els had set out a couple of drawing exercises for the pupils to learn the dynamics of overlapping and most importantly: perspective. Similarly to the pictures from week 1, Els had put together pictures that demonstrated basic principles of these important techniques, accompamied with guides to do the drawings step by step. For the younger group the guides were important, as they had to attempt to follow them coherently and not to rush the exercise and see if they were paying attention to their own picture in comparison to the one they were looking at. Many, like over previous weeks, dashed straight for the finished line, claiming "they've done trickier", yet not actually fulfilling the requirements of the exercise. The most complicated image which caught out alot of pupils in both groups was the squiggly snake (or wriggly worm, I'm not quite sure what it was meant to be).

Making the snake appear behind the branch proved difficult for the children to draw, the technique of leaving parts of it blank and finishing the lines of the branch so that it appeared to be winding around. They followed the guides right but then when it came to removing the adequate parts of the snake to complete the drawing they felt they needed an eraser, which we wanted to avoid as the purpose of the lesson was for them to learn how to draw it themselves. So we asked them to take a marker and draw over the pencil lines except leaving certain parts blank that would make the image appear complete.

Like the example shown above a number of the younger group had to attempt the drawing twice and take their time in figuring out how to correct the mistakes they made. Using the marker to go over the pencil lines was an effective way of teaching them this important technique. The two other drawings they were instructed to copy they found somewhat less tricky, although they were also very important. They were to show them how to approach drawing perspective, by seperating out what was foreground, middleground and background. and starting with the former. One was a simple drawing of three lines each sprouting a tree, size and layering being the focus. Many were much more fruitful with this exercise possibly due to it's simplicity although some did start backwards and had to start again follwoing the guides provided. The third drawing was similar again except this time more complicated and blocky in it's shapes. It was less apparent what was foreground and background, however that was the challenge. Most of the children responded much better with these two drawings as they had a more simplistic layout and appearance. Taking their markers in hand and seeing what parts were to be left out helped them learn how to draw perspective and overlapping compared to their knowledge of it in week 1.

With the older group Els felt that they could go a step further and showed them more advanced ideas of perspective drawing with reference to one point and three point perspective, shadow, vanishing points as well as the artist M. C. Escher. Escher was a dutch graphic artist whom excelled in playing with perspective and creating majestic hand rendered optical illusions. The children found his drawings fascinating and were full of question about them, Els was telling them how Escher used his knowledge of perspective to produce his incredibly ornate images, stressing that being aware of perspective is a key tool in drawing. She went on to show them images of how to draw shapes such as boxes and spheres when applying perspective techniques, the general yet crucial basics.

(Right: M.C.Escher "Relativity" 1953, also described as "the impossible stairs").

When commencing on the drawing exercise many of the children challenged themselves with the snake drawing first and a few of them succeeded with it very well, some in fact copied the image almost exactly and even made their own additions. Plenty of the pupils struggled with it although on their second attempt most completed the drawing as expected, with few (mostly the younger pupils) still finding it difficult. The other drawings were completed with more ease by most, tracing over the pencil lines in marker and making sure to leave out the parts that were to be left out. Some still approached it by more so copying the shapes rather than following the steps however Els and I were at the ready to show them the method.

Towards the remaining few mintues of the lesson Els had also prepared s

ome extra drawings for the children to do, more focused on one point perspective. These drawings threw the children off a bit more, as one had to be more aware of the use of lines, angles and equality in creating an effective vanishing point. Some managed to copy the shapes in a fair way, yet failed to properly consider how they were producing the perspective in the image, yet this was only their first time at drawing this method so overall they did rather well. Next week we will be moving them on to life drawing and further studies of perspective and shading and getting them into using charcoal.