Lesson At A Glance

A brief overview of each step. Buttons jump to each section for detailed information.

10 Min – Intro to Supplies

15 Min – Practice drawing reference

5 Min – Art Room Rules & intro

10 Min – Practice sketch 2

5 Min

30 Min – Finish pencil drawing

2 Min – Everyone helps

SCROLL & TEACH
LESSONPLAN

Each section is a different color. Read over once and then you can SCROLL & TEACH using any device you like. It’s designed to work best with your phone.

Students set up their work area. Remind students how to arrange their supplies with our set up:

1. Set bag on the floor leaning against the stool or table legs
2. Pull case out of the bag and place the
3. Case on the stool, facing away from table
4. Open case lid, leaning against the table.
5. Get needed supplies (sketch pad and pencils today) and place on table.

If you don’t have small flat stools for cases, they can be placed on the floor. This keeps cases off of the table so that supplies and table space don’t become a battle ground.

Draw a creature that is able to fly but looks like it shouldn’t be. Have fun with it. The animal may by fanciful, funny, bizarre, known, unknown, or a combination of any of these directions. Be creative.

This warm-up is to help them get comfortable on their first day without the pressure of drawing something realistic.

You can use the reference photos to display if someone seems stuck. But have them draw from their imagination. Just show the photos for a moment to spark ideas.

Funny ideas for flying creatures (tap any image to open viewer)

This button jumps you down to the READY, SET, GO! section

Introduce the drawing supplies.

Have your students pick up and handle each item as you talk about them. Have them also finish writing their names on these (if practical – not on the kneaded eraser), and other supplies with sharpie markers as you talk.

• 11 x 17″ Sketch pad: This is large because sometimes you need to draw large. You can divide a page into smaller parts when you need less space.
• Graphite Pencils: There are 2 each of the 2B, 4B and Ebony pencils. These are soft, softer, and extra-soft graphite pencils. The softer the graphite, the darker it draws on your paper.
• Canvas Pencil: This is a dark grey or black colored pencil
• White Eraser: This is for changing your work with hard erasing. It is softer than most erasers though, so you need to be extra careful not to break it or pick at it. Never use this eraser on charcoal because it only smears it.
• Kneaded Eraser: This is in a wrapper, but you need to unwrap it and mash it up. Then stretch it! This eraser is even softer, and is good for light erasing, cleaning up smudges, and also for working back into pencil or charcoal. It can get dirty very fast, but that’s why you stretch it. Fold it back over a few times and it cleans itself. It also makes no eraser dust!

• Charcoal: This is a set of 4 charcoal sticks. Just like pencils, there are harder ones and softer ones. You can choose which ever you like to draw with. They are chunky, and so you can’t draw details with them. Don’t worry about that, because when you are using charcoal, you don’t want a lot of details. You can erase charcoal to some degree with the kneaded eraser.
• Blending Sticks: Also called B L E N D I N G – S T U M P S Solid rolled paper blending sticks will clean up nicely using a sandpaper board. Tortillions can be peeled to clean, but don’t last as long or hold up as well., and tortillions (which are actually slightly different). Use these instead of your finger to smudge and blend pencil, charcoal, and pastels. They can be cleaned off by rubbing on a piece of sandpaper.

• Sandpaper block: The wooden paddle has a small stack of sandpapers like a pad, for cleaning blending sticks. You can also sharpen a pencil tip with it. When the sheet of sandpaper eventually gets totally messed up, you can tear it off to reveal a clean piece.

Tap the 4 arrows icon to enlarge the video to full screen.

Review the demo video and demonstrate to your students, or you can simply display the video on a larger screen for them to watch.

Below are a few points you can say and actions to do as you are drawing:

• Drawing lightly lets you change where lines are by erasing – (draw a light line and erase it completely).
• Drawing heavy lines messes up the paper underneath – (draw a heavy line. Go to the next page and lightly shade over the same area to reveal the white line from the dent in the paper).
• If you draw heavily, you can use the last page of your
  sketch pad and a large newsprint pad.
• Shade very light at first, and darken slowly. Never make dark shadows all at once. (do some shading and then blend with a stick). Blending is just one shading technique. There are many more.
• Blending makes lines become fuzzy. (After you blend like this, you can re-draw your lines again to make them stand out).

As students are getting their sketchbooks to a new page, walk around and hand each person a cheasel with a photo reference of the stacked rocks. It’s good to let students choose from the two references, so you’ll need a few extras.

Have students use the photo of a stack of rocks to make a rough sketch. Begin with lines and then do a little shading on at least one of the rocks.

NOTE: Don’t blend with fingers or stumps on this practice drawing, but if someone does anyway, that’s ok.

As students are finishing their first sketch you can casually begin to go over the art room rules.

Show the list on screen or write them out. Have fun with the first rule, but don’t elaborate on the rules this time. We will go over them in more detail next week. You may also print out a poster of the 4 rules by clicking on one of the versions here.

Because our rules are special and a big deal, use this handy guide like a teacher talk. This is a super-abbreviated version for today. Later in the lesson and next week we will go over these in more detail.

The 3rd rule is also explained in the next step, as students are working.

Students will use their 2B pencil and white eraser to draw from life.

Use real green bell peppers and whole garlic buds as their subject. They can choose either the shiny pepper, or the dull garlic.

Allow students to arrange their object, trying several positions. Provide colored or white paper to place the object on, for contrast.

If you can set up some dramatic lighting, that will help a lot.

The goal is to work on shading more than getting the shape accurate. Encourage shading and blending. If they want to blend using their blending sticks, that is ok. (Finger blending should be discouraged.)

Drawing Examples (tap any image to open viewer)

Note that the garlic is a colored drawing. The color is very light and translucent (see-through), most of what you see is the pencil drawing.

Examples:

• From life because you can see it much more clearly than a photo
• From life because you can understand what the form is in 3D
• From life because you can change your Viewpoint and lighting if you want to
• From a photo because you don’t have to figure out how to make colors change to black and white
• From a photo because you can see it in 2D like you’re drawing it
• From a photo because your viewpoint stays put and you can measure distances.”

Students Choose either a photo or a live object to draw. Then set up their work area. Use a cheasel stand for photos. Place objects on contrasting paper and add lighting if you can.

Have your students turn to a new page in their sketchbook.

Tell your class that now you are going to create a more finished-looking pencil drawing, instead of practice sketching. Everyone gets to choose whether they want to use a photo reference or draw from life. There the peppers and garlic they practiced with, and some photos that are fruit, garlic and some other things if someone wants more variety.

Let them know they have 30 minutes so they need to take their time! As they get ready, have them begin with a brand new clean page in the sketch book.

Everyone should try and draw outlines first, and then add shading. It’s ok if it looks different than you see in the references today. We are not worried about accuracy!

• Wash hands
• Super-wash brushes if used
• Put art supplies away
• Wipe tables & toss trash
• Remove any smocks (last)
• Check for items on floors and tables

This lesson allows personal freedom

Collect smooth rocks to stack for drawing reference, or use our PDF photo reference. Also print the PDF poster.

STUDENT’S MATERIALS

• 14″ x 17″ Sketch paper
• 4B Pencil
• 2B Pencil
• White Erasers
• Kneaded Erasers
• Charcoal
• Blending stick(stump)
• Sandpaper block

Week #4: Start Painting

August 26 – 30

Students will learn and work with alike colors (analogous), and practice simple brush technique using acrylic paints. A colorful background and bold line-based design are used for their first painting of the year. The rules are reviewed and explained in more detail. Creations students (advanced), will learn to make an abstract bold design based on photo reference.

Week #5: Underpainting Landscape 1

September 2 – 6

Students will begin the first of two lessons, where they create a landscape in acrylic paints, using the classic red underpainting technique.