Mrs. Ryback's Art Studio: Still Life Drawing: Learning to Look

1st and 2nd Grades have been studying still life drawing as a means to hone their observation skills. Artists gleam inspiration from their surroundings, and being able to really look at something and study it's shapes, lines, colors, all of the features that make it unique, will help strengthen students' abilities to communicate visually. Our drawings will come out much more realistic, true to life, when we have something to look at, rather than drawing from memory. You may ask, what about abstract art? It doesn't look realistic. In fact, sometimes it doesn't look like anything?!? All artists begin with realism. We must first study our subject matter, learn as much as we can about it, before we can begin to deconstruct it, abstract it, to it's most essential elements. Observational drawing is a foundation for building artistic skills and visual fluency.

With both 1st and 2nd Grade, we began with an emphasis on identifying shapes, lines and directions of objects. We talked about drawing the objects that were closest to us first, and starting from the bottom of our page and working our way up.

1st Graders studied the works of Henri Matisse, focusing on the patterns he created in his backgrounds. They drew their still lives in pencil on watercolor paper and traced them with Sharpies. We then added color and pattern with oil pastels, making sure to press hard to get vibrant colors, and experiment with mixing and layering the pastels to make new colors. After discovering that oil and water repel each other (Science Connection!!), we used water color paint to paint the background and areas that had not been colored. This process is called RESIST.

2nd Graders began their unit with a review of warm and cool colors. We divided our papers in half and painted one side using warm colors, and the other using cool. These paintings were later used as the backgrounds for their still life drawings. We discussed Figure-Ground relationships, and foreground vs background, meaning that the objects and the table were the figures- the focal point, and would be in the foreground, while the wall acted as the background. One side of the paper would become the table for our objects to sit on, the foreground, and the other would be the background. We looked at the still life paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, and noticed his big brush strokes and bold use of colors, and how he filled the canvas with his objects. Students drew their still lives directly onto their paintings, then used oil pastels to add color.