Camp Creek Press

This week we did some contour drawing (no paper plate this time — lesson plan is here) at the beginning of class.

contour drawing by J, age 9

J, age 9, contour drawing, first attempt

second attempt

E, age 7, contour drawing

Left to right: first attempt at contour drawing, second attempt, final observational drawing, by E, age 6

After we finished our contour drawings, we did an observational drawing. You can see the children used the information they gathered during the contour drawing to improve their observational drawings.

observational drawing by Jack, age 8

After drawing time, we worked on wire sculptures.

I hope these updates are helpful for you to figure out what we did in art class each week! :^)

We repeated last week's lesson since the majority of the kids missed it. In your children's sketchbooks, you should find samples of blind contour drawings and observational drawings of either flowers or leaves.

I didn't get photos of everyone's work, due to the fact that my camera batteries were dead (d'oh) and I only had my sad little camera phone, but here's a sampling:

(blind contour on right, observational drawing on left)

observational drawing

excellent blind contour on left, first attempt observational drawing on top right, then when asked to critique his own drawing, said he didn't "count" the different flower sections — second attempt observational drawing on bottom right!

blind contour on top right, observational drawing on bottom left — note he turned the leaves between drawings

p drawing a lily

jack's observational drawing of the lily

After drawing, we played with wire. Next week, we'll be making plans (drawing sketches) and then working on a more purposeful wire sculpture. We'll also be looking at some photos of wire work by different artists.

If you have them, please send safety scissors with the kids next week — the wire we are working with is very soft and easy to cut.

See you next week!

We met this week at the Champaign Library — what a beautiful space! It is extremely warm, however, so make sure you aren't overdressed next week! For at least the next few weeks we will be meeting here.

There are no bathrooms attached to the room, so please make sure kids go before class. ;^)

This week we started with some blind contour drawings. We talked about no dimensions vs. one-dimensional vs. two-dimensional vs. three-dimensional, and we talked about outlines. Then we drew outlines of flowers "blind" (can't see our hand) and talked about the results.

Then we did some observational drawings of our same flowers.

Finally, we introduced wire and did some free exploration with that fun new material.

We will be repeating this lesson next week, as most of our students were out this week! Hope to see you then!

Our first class met at the Urbana Library - a nice space, but unfortunately they will only allow us to book the room once a month, so we'll be looking elsewhere for a more permanent venue.

For this first class, we discussed what observational drawing is (looking very closely and drawing as many details as possible), how it is different from free drawing (drawing whatever you like, using your imagination), and how we will be practicing observational drawing at the beginning of each class.

Children as young as three (and sometimes two!) are capable of creating detailed observational drawings; you may wish to try this with your younger children at home!

You can find the online version of our first lesson here: Observational Drawing.

You may also be interested in reading Benefits of Observational Drawing.

See you next week!

Class for Friday, Feb. 1, is canceled due to weather. Snow, that is.

Stay warm & drive safe! See you next week, same time, same place (Urbana Library children's auditorium, 10:00 a.m.).