Thursday, September 25, 2008

Drawing Blindly

Our students education in the arts classics continues. Yesterday they learned The Machine, a classic theater game. Today we learned a classic visual arts exercise, blind contour drawing. Students in art school spend a lot of time doing blind contour drawing. The results are never displayed in galleries or showcased in portfolios, however. Why? They look awful. Blind contour drawing is not about a great product. Instead, it is about learning to observe.

Our students read a bit about the lines and contours. They then practiced drawing their hands without ever looking at the paper or lifting the marker from their papers. What they draw usually did not look much like a hand. But they really look at their hands intently, maybe for the first time ever. After doing this a couple times, they worked with a partner. They tried drawing their partners, again never looking at the paper or lifting their pens from the paper. There was a bit of nervous giggling here, but there was also a tremendous amount of concentration and observation. You can see some pictures of the students involved in this above.

Homework: Enjoy a light evening. (1) Do "Equals," Math, pp 62-69, all problems. (2) Finish the final drafts of the All About Me paragraphs.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So glad that time is spent on art, music and theater - we are really lucky. Thank you for explaining the exercises. Danielle is enjoying them immensely!

Lynn Kersey (Danielle's mother)