See the Light Art | Homeschool Art Curriculum

Unleash Your Child's Creativity

You are here: Home / Archives for James Pence

James Pence

How to Draw Eagles

Sky and mountain background with flying eagle and cartoonish pencil. Text overlay: How to Draw Eagles. See the Light Shine

Today, we’re going to have a (sort of) patriotic theme by learning how to draw eagles. The Web sites I’ve listed below will give your children several different approaches to drawing eagles. Some are fairly easy and others a bit more challenging. I hope you’ll have fun with this.

Four ways to draw an eagle:

The following link from Wikihow gives you four different approaches to drawing an eagle, including how to draw an eagle “in flight.”

http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-an-Eagle

How to draw an eagle in 8 easy steps:

This tutorial takes you through an 8-step process of drawing an eagle. The web page also lists some interesting facts about eagles.

http://www.wedrawanimals.com/how-to-draw-an-eagle/

How to draw a cartoon eagle:

If your child is interested in cartooning, this Web page shows how to draw a cartoon eagle.

http://www.how-to-draw-funny-cartoons.com/cartoon-eagle.html

VIDEO:

How to draw a “cute” (cartoony) eagle

 

Sky and mountain background with flying eagle and cartoonish pencil. Text overlay: How to Draw Eagles. See the Light Shine

The Elements of Art – Introduction

Homeschool Art Unit 1 - The Art Elements

Have you ever heard of the seven elements of art? Do you know what they are?

Try comparing them to the elements found in nature: hydrogen, oxygen, iron, gold, etc. Just as everything we see is made up of some combination of natural elements, so all art is made up of some combination of the art elements.

There are 118 physical elements on the periodic table, with 94 occurring naturally. However, there’s a difference of opinion on the number of art elements that can be identified. Some people suggest only five, others six, but most lists include seven. 

If you plan to teach art at home, the elements of art are foundational. So today’s post is focused on helping you understand the elements and incorporate them into your homeschool art curriculum.

Here’s a list of the elements. Some of the terms are self-explanatory, but others might need a bit of explanation:

Line – Just look around you and you’ll see lines everywhere. Thick and thin. Short and long. Straight and curved. Zig-zagged.

Shape – The next step up from a line is a shape. Circle. Triangle. Square. Trapezoid. Blob. (Sounds like we’re back in geometry class, except for that last one!)

Form – A form is a shape with dimension. Whether it’s an actual object or a drawing of something that is rendered to look like it’s 3-D.

Texture – Smooth, rough, bumpy, jagged, shiny, dull.

Space – Space is a bit tricky, especially when you’re thinking in terms of a “flat” painting. Essentially, space is the area taken up by an object. However, often artists will use “negative space” (the space around an object) in their work. 

Color – As opposed to a “neutral” such as gray, black, or white.

Value – The lightness or darkness of an object.

Now that you know the basic elements of art, how do you teach them to your children? Here are several Web sites and videos that may be of help. Check them out:

 

  • This link will take you to a brief “slide show” that covers the basic elements: 

http://www.slideshare.net/kpikuet/elements-and-principles-of-art-presentation

 

  • Here’s a link to a web page that lists ideas for teaching your children about the elements of art. (Note: This site is from the U.K., so the terminology is a bit different. But it’s still a good resource.)

http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/art/elements.htm

 

  • The following article from arthistory.about.com explains why the elements are important.

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/reference/f/elements.htm

Finally, the following super-short video (about 1 min) will give you a quick reference for understanding the art elements. This video lists 8 elements (see what I mean about a difference of opinion regarding the number?), including Type (as in print/typeface) as an element.

Drawing Bootcamp 2: Modified Contour Drawing

Drawing Boot Camp 2 - Modified Contour Drawing

Last week we learned how to do a blind contour drawing. If you’ve had a chance to practice it–and I hope you have–you probably experienced more than a little frustration. After all, when we draw we want to be pleased with the results. But that’s not easy with blind contour drawing. In fact, more often than not, our finished “drawing” actually looks more like a two-year-old’s scribbling.

Don’t get discouraged. Remember, blind contour drawing is not an end in itself but rather a means to an end. It’s like an athlete warming up before a game. When football players, stretch out before a game, the stretching isn’t an end in itself. People don’t pay big bucks to go watch 22 men sit on a field and stretch. Football players stretch partially to prevent injury and partially to maximize performance. The more limber they are, the better they can perform.

Blind contour drawing is kind of like stretching. The more you practice it, the better you will be come at drawing what you see.

Today we’re going to take it one step further and do what is called modified contour drawing. It’s almost exactly the same as blind contour drawing with one small change. In blind contour drawing you are not allowed to look at the paper at all. With modified contour drawing you are allowed to look back and forth between the object you’re drawing and your paper.

Here’s how to do a modified contour drawing. My subject again is going to be a coffee mug.

1.  First, set up your work area. If you are right-handed, your coffee mug will be on your left and your paper will be off to the right. Reverse this if you are left-handed.

2.  Next, choose a place on the coffee mug (or whatever object you’ve chosen to draw) where you will focus your eyes. Then place your pencil somewhere on your paper. (Make sure that you’ve got enough space to draw the mug.)

3.  Now as you did before, trace the outside of the mug with your eyes and allow your hand to move in the same direction. I tell my students to pretend that there is an invisible cable connecting their hand and their eyes. This time, it’s okay to flick your eyes back and forth from the mug to the paper. You should still spend 90% of your time looking at the coffee mug, but by checking the paper every now and then you can make sure that your hand isn’t trailing off somewhere.

The key to this is going very slowly. Don’t be in a rush to complete the drawing. And remember that you’re only drawing the contour (that is, the outside edge). You don’t need to worry about shading or any of the details. At this point, we just want the basic shape.

Here’s the modified contour drawing that I just did of my favorite coffee mug. Now you give it a try.

modified contour drawing of a coffee mug

Drawing Bootcamp: Blind Contour Drawing

Drawing Boot Camp 1 - Blind Contour Drawing

How to Do a Blind Contour Drawing

Athletes stretch their muscles before they work out. Do you know how to stretch your drawing muscles?

No, I’m not talking about flexing your fingers and wrists so your hands don’t get sore when you draw. I’m talking about teaching your hand and eyes to work together.

One of the first exercises I give students in my drawing classes is called blind contour drawing, and it’s a great way to begin learning how to draw what you see.

In blind contour drawing, you will draw the outline of an object without looking at your paper.

(My students usually freak out the first time I ask them to do this!)

“It’ll look terrible!” they protest.

Yes, it probably will. But turning out a beautiful, finished drawing isn’t the purpose of this exercise. The goal of blind contour drawing is to train yourself to sketch exactly what you see. And the more you do this, the better you will get at it.

So how do you do a blind contour drawing? Here’s how, step by step:

1.  Choose any object you’d like to draw. For your first few tries, I suggest drawing something simple, like a coffee mug, a piece of fruit, etc. You want a basic shape, nothing too complex.

2.  If you’re right handed, position the object in front of you, but over to the left, so that you have to turn your head away from your paper to see it. If you’re left handed, put the object to the right and the paper on the left.

3.  Now, put the tip of your pencil on the paper.

4.  Look at the object and slowly draw the outline of the object without looking at the paper (don’t take your pencil tip off of the paper).

 

[TIP: Begin by focusing on a particular location on the object, then try to follow the outline of the object with your eyes as you draw.]

 

When you’re finished, look at your finished drawing. Don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t look anything like the object. Remember: the idea is to train your hand and eye to work together.

To give you an idea of what a blind contour drawing looks like, I just did a drawing of one of my favorite objects: a coffee mug. (It’s not that I particularly like drawing mugs; I just like coffee, so I always have one handy!)

Here’s my blind contour drawing of my coffee mug. (Note: I went back over the lines with a darker pencil, so it would show up better.)

blind contour drawing of a coffee mug

Now it’s your turn. Blind contour drawing may be frustrating at first, but if you stick with it, your blind drawings will eventually look less like “chicken scratches” and more like the object you’re trying to draw. And the better you get, the more complicated images you can try drawing this way.

Challenge: Do at least one blind contour drawing each day for the next week.

Next time, I’ll show you how to refine the process so that your drawings look more realistic.

Keep drawing! – Jim Pence

Blue background with image of a boot. Text overlay - Drawing Boot Camp. Lesson 1: Blind Contour Drawing See the Light Art

The Art Elements: Value

Art Elements 8 - Value

What is value in art? Simply put, it’s the lightness or darkness of an object. If you use value properly in a painting or drawing, it can make your work “pop” with life. If you don’t use value well, your painting or drawing will look flat or washed out. Value is arguably one of the most important elements of art.

Here are some web pages and videos that will help you understand and use value.

Free Printable:

This page has an easy to follow explanation of value and how it works. It also includes a good downloadable free printable (email subscription required).

https://www.kitchentableclassroom.com/the-element-of-value-in-art/

Lesson:

This is a nice basic lesson on value, with good examples:

https://www.smore.com/v8n7-element-of-art-value

 Video:

This video explains the meaning of value and how it works in photography and art

The Art Elements: Color

Art Elements 7 - Color

Color is one of the seven elements of art. For today’s post, I’ve linked to some websites and videos that focus on color theory. The sites listed below offer something for all ages. 

The better you understand how color works, the more you will be able to do. Plus, playing with color is just plain fun!

So here are some great color theory websites:

1. Super-easy Color Wheel Page for Young Children — http://www.kidzone.ws/science/colorwheel.htm

This one is great for very young children. Nothing complex, just the basic primary and complementary colors and how they relate to one another.

2. Easy and Fun Color-mixing Tutorial — http://www.artgraphica.net/free-art-lessons/watercolor/watercolor-color-wheel.html

I’d recommend this site for middle graders. There’s a little more in-depth explanation of how colors work and relate, plus an easy exercise in color mixing using one brush, watercolors, and paper plates.

3. Color Theory Tutorial — http://www.worqx.com/color/color_wheel.htm

Send your jr. high and high-schoolers to this site. It’s still very concise, but provides more detail than the other sites and is a bit more complex.

4. The History of the Color Wheel — http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2008/05/08/history-of-the-color-wheel/

Did you know that Sir Isaac Newton was influential in the development of the color wheel? Neither did I until I visited this page. If you’re interested not only in color theory, but also the history of color theory, check out this site.

5.  Finally, here are a few videos about color wheels that may help you better understand how color works, and how to work with color!

The Color Wheel for Children

This video is very basic and great for young children:

For Older Students: A “Different” Color Wheel

Why is this color wheel different? Because it uses a slightly different set of primary colors. In most beginning art classes, students are taught that the three primaries are red, yellow, and blue. That is true, as far as it goes! But there are other sets of primaries. For example, if you’re working with light (as opposed to pigment), the primaries are red, green, and blue. And if you’re working with photography or printing, the primaries are cyan, magenta, and yellow. This video explains the differences between the color wheels.

Homeschool Art Unit: The Art Elements, Part 7: Color - See the Light Shine