Drawing lessons are not as easy as it appears in the book.

I’m actually still struggling with the idea of giving kids exact copies of pictures to copy as it is so against my grain and what I’ve learned, but I’m going to stick with it.

The kids were not happy with Leo the lion. They insisted that it did not really look like a lion and they gave me a pretty hard time about settling down and trying to follow directions to draw him. (and they are only 7, 8 and 9 years old)

I tried explaining to them that we are just using Leo to learn how to follow simple lines and elements of shape but they were not too convinced.

As I do each drawing I follow the books instructions as I draw on a white board and have them follow along.

They were finally all finished amidst lots of talking and it was time to do the finishing up.

In her book Mona Brooks discusses how important it is to have the children work quietly. It’s almost an impossibility but I think next time I will use an idea my high school daughter says one of her teachers uses. She gives them a paper to hold and anyone who talks gets in taken away.

At the end of the class whoever still has the paper, gets a +1 on their test.

I think I’ll try it with candies.

I ordered a whole bunch of new markers which the kids were really excited about. The best makers to are the
Prismacolor Premier Double-Ended Art Markers

I bought mine through Dick Blick, they have a huge selection with all the colors listed. The are also very well priced.

These really thick markers really allow the kids to cover their drawings with alot of color.

I am trying to give them the perspective also of the fact that skies are not thin little pieces of blue across the top of their paper and that life can be all filled in  on their papers.(not in strips here and there)

One little girl got very frustrated as she was attempting to fill in her paper with color after she made her lion. So she just scribbled all over it. I told her we will save it and see what we can do with it next week.

Another child decided she did not want to color in a well so she started to cut out the bottom of her picture.

I am usually quite accepting of what the kids do with their art, but as I am trying to stick to a program here, I do want them to follow directions so I suggested to her to now paste her cut out picture onto a piece of construction paper so that it would look finished.

She chose a matching color and was very happy about doing so.

Some of the other children continued with the project more painstakingly and did come out with more finished projects.

I think I am going to have to teach them the different ways that artists draw. They are too focused on too much reality. A lion should look EXACTLY like a lion.

Oh by the way I did give them another exercise to do before we started.

I tried giving them the mirror image activity where they are not copying exactly what the image is but have to mirror it.

Not an easy task for most of them, but an important one.