Over he past couple of weeks Class 4 have been looking at using tone to create realistic form in their artwork. We have been working with a limited colour palette, create two-tone images with chalk on black paper / pencil, charcoal and ink on white paper and we have focused particularly on trying to draw shapes in correct proportion and only drawing what is actually there - this sounds obvious but it is common for children to draw an ear for instance even if it is covered in hair just because they know there is one there!
One of the pieces we created used a strip method - we tried this out first as a whole class collaborative piece and it worked brilliantly (I need to take a photo of that to share in an updated blog) so the pupils attempted a self-portrait using very moody high-contrast mono photographs. The children were given thier portrait cut up into 1cm strips (these were numbered on the back with an arrow for orientation) which they then had to copy onto blank strips - for the image to work careful measuring was required and the clever part is that the children often didn't know what part of the image they were drawing as it was so small so they had to focus instead on the shapes and the light and dark.
The children then placed their drawn strips on the original 'base' image.
Some pupils found the strip method very painstaking! I offered them an alternative approach - the grid method. We used fairly large squared for this so drawing needed to be precise and carefully observed but it still really helps with overall proportion. Some of the images had an incedible likeness as you can see from the image below (note, the blue sheet which was used as a viewfinder so that pupils could view a portion of the image at a time).
Some pupils opted for a 'limited palette' approach whereby they chose three colours to represent light, medium and dark tones - this made for more stylised work and an interesting effect.
Here is an half-completed piece using the strip method. Really excellent work!
Some pupils also did additional landscape pieces using the grid method. The were drawn quickly using charcoal but were really effective too.
Great work Class 4. I'll upload more images of final pieces hopefully next week.
