ASL Hands

I am so excited to finally start a new project with 7th grade! Only seeing 7th and 8th grade twice a week makes it difficult to complete more than one project per term, especially during third term when we miss so many days of school due to snow. Now that their short story books are complete (pictures to come later this week), today we started a project called ASL Hands, or Sistine Chapel Hands, because I can't decide on which title I like best.

First I shared some background information about the great Michelangelo and we talked about the Sistine Chapel ceiling. If you are interested in seeing the slideshow, it is on the 7th grade page. The inspiration for this project stems from the famous artwork "Creation of Adam" in which Michelangelo paints the most gorgeous fresco hands. For this project, students will have the opportunity to work with compressed charcoal, which is my favorite 2-D medium, so I am excited to have students work with that in the upcoming weeks. The final product will be three hands, each one spelling out each one of the students' initials in American Sign Language. The drawings will be rendered realistically, using either the additive or subtractive charcoal method. Realistic drawings can sometimes be very daunting, so I like to start this project by working on a silly activity: blind drawing. Students had a blast this morning creating blind portraits of one another. I have students start with blind drawing so that they feel comfortable working with contour line. It is a great way to measure growth because students are happy to see the improvements that they make between the initial blind drawings and the next set of contour drawings.

After students took turns drawing pictures of one another, I had them practice blind drawings of their hands. They were instructed to look at their hands in different positions and to practice paying attention to the details (fingernails, knuckles, curves). Again, allowing students the time to draw their hands in a silly way, it will make it easier to branch into realistic drawing - we are taking baby steps to get there.

Students will probably start next class by drawing another blind drawing of their hand and move into drawing a contour hand while examining it closely. Once students have mastered hands, they'll experiment with using charcoal while drawing a simple geometric still life. Stay tuned for pictures in the upcoming weeks!

Contour Line Drawing

7th and 8th grade artists have been learning about contour lines in the last two weeks. Contour lines are solid outlines of an object. Drawings using contour lines do not include any actual shading, so they generally look unrealistic. Students engaged in a fun activity where they took turns drawing blind contour line drawings of one another, meaning that they looked solely at their subject while drawing and not the paper. The goal is to focus on every outline, every curve in the face to try to include as much detail as possible. The drawings are very goofy, but the artists learned a lot about attention to detail.

 During the next class, students tried contour line drawing of their hands in order to practice for the upcoming project. I gave students permanent markers to draw with so that they were forced to draw without erasing. Drawing hands is a difficult task, but the more attempts that were made, the better the contour drawings were looking. Students had to pay attention to the wrinkles of the hands, the curves of the fingers, and the spaces between each knuckle in order to maintain proper proportion.

Next up: charcoal demo!