The Gusserane Art Intervention: Week 7

The final week before the school term was to finish for the Christmas holidays, we engaged the children with a final drawing exercise to keep them focused despite their excitement with the oncoming of Santa Claus. The younger group were given an image by Els to copy, due to their excitement we felt it would be too difficult to keep them concentrated on life drawing for the session. This drawing was a much more complicated one than they had done before, although it was the overlapping objects and details of the image we wanted to see them focusing on. Some managed rather well in creating an effective copy of the composition and working with a smaller pen, we could see a level in some of them showing through of what was practiced in the previous drawing lessons. There was still a certain amount of instruction we had to give, we find that they are more likely to look at the image once and then continue to draw their impression of it. Some even whom might not quite like what the exercise is and decide to draw whatever they please purely out of boredom we really have to try and keep on top of. This time they had been given more colourful markers rather than the plain black we had, and many went on to to start colouring in the image despite us asking them not to, yet it probably is something that comes naturally to them.

Unfortunately some pupils in the class, we feel with weaker abilities, also tend to have shorter attention spans and frequently demand myself and Els to attend to them for both positive and negative reasons. Such things as asking to go to the bathroom more than once, asking to change their marker even though the one they have is fine, constantly asking what to do next, distracting the other pupils, aggravating the other pupils, shouting etc. Els felt it may be necessary to split the group between strong and weak for the sake of giving the right amount of time and attention to each, especially when the project returns after Christmas, we will be planning and preparing material for the exhibition. Certain children we did sympathise to possibly have an attention deficit, however we were shown no support from the outset to help us work with any of the pupils whom had diagnosed learning difficulties or even particularily problematic children. We felt this was perhaps holding those children back and reducing the learning they could get out of it and it also showed a distinct lack of interest from the school staff in the work we are doing with the groups. A huge point we are making by doing the Living Arts Project is to encourage art to be taken seriously in the school curriculum.

In the afternoon with the older group, before we started the life drawing I also wanted to help increase the children's understanding for perspective, by getting them to do a quick 20 minute exercise I designed, based on an exercise I had to do myself when I was in primary school. Quite simply it was an introduction to the technique of drawing 3-D lettering which I thought would help connect the idea of vanishing points, angling and shading the correct areas with something that wasn't in front of them but that they could visualise for themselves. Particularily in popular culture, 3-D lettering consists with film posters and advertising methods so by getting the children to just try the first letter of their own name I was encouraging them to practice by later attempting their favourite film title. Many tried to grasp the effect by creating a thin shadow, although it was in the right place, it was not following the ideal look of the lettering. It was quite difficult to help them see what I meant however I did have a short instructional video and a number of images to coax them on. Once they gave a couple of simple angular letters a try they managed to grasp the idea, however curved letters were still problematic I was happy to see that they understood the technique.

Afterwards we continued with the still life drawing, Els brought in her stuffed duck and duckling for the session as well as the fox so the children would have some variety and more of a challenge. Of course they were more interested in touching the duck and expressing shock at the little stuffed duckling, yet the drawing session went down well. It was a similar set up to the last session, we organised the children to sit in a square around the objects so that they could each attempt different aspects. I used the timer on my phone to measure the sittings i.e. 2 minutes, 5 minutes etc, and each interval they were to move places to the next table and start again.This time with the duck, the duckling, the fox and the boxes, the children had alot more to work around and try to include in their drawings.

A few of the drawings still showed a lot more attention being paid to particualr objects and not quite focusing on the composition as a whole e.g. the duckling looking far too small in relativity to the duck or the boxes being far to large in comparison to the animals. With issues such as these we really tried to engage the children in concentrating more on what they were looking at rather than the impression they were getting from it. Although they were under time pressure as well we felt this challenge was condusive to getting them really looking, we found many more of them were taking the time to concentrate on the point of view they had from where they were sitting. However regarding the perspective of the boxes, a good few of the pupils caught on to the concept much better this week, with excellent understanding of it's dynamics. Some drew the boxes perfectly but then tried to include the animals which then led them to difficulty as they didn't have any sharp angles. However their success with perspective led us to believe that it was sinking in and they could easily have the hang of it by the time the exhibition comes around. It shows how regular (even if it is only once a week) practice at basic drawing skills can quickly gather momentum over time and how important it is to the pupils whom learn them. A number of them tell us that they really look forward to doing the art class with us which shows an interest in the subject especially from those whom excel at it. It is important that art is taught as a proper subject next to others such as English, Irish, Maths and Science etc. as it is a whole other level of development for the individual.

The drawing session ended well with many of the kids having found it a chanllenge but taking it in their stride and applying themselves. This was our last session with them until the new term begins after Christmas when we will have another 7 weeks to complete the LAP program and get ready for the exhibition in March.