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Make a shy drawing

Why make a shy drawing?

Well to make a drawing which seems shy, you really have to slow down and withdraw from the hustle and bustle of the school day. The act of making a shy drawing, although sometimes tricky at first, helps pupils relax into a state of mind which isn’t normally experienced during the school day, and which lends itself to creative thought.

These exercises and suggestions provide a focus which enables pupils and teachers to explore different aspects of making a drawing, including sound, action and intention. By taking the focus a way from what the drawings look like in the first instance, and by providing starting points which may be outside of pupils existing experience, pupils are less inclined to be discouraged because they think they “can’t draw”. By presenting these exercises as opportunities for the class to “think together” around the activity,in an open-ended way, you will also be encouraging pupils to think laterally and inventively.

Please feedback via the “reply to” comments form below. We’d love to receive images of children’s work produced as a result of these exercises.

Set Up and Teaching Notes

Quiet or shy drawings need to be made in a quiet room! If you need to get rid of some of the pupils energy first, think about making loud drawings first (or intersperse and enjoy the contrast!)

Use quiet music or draw attention to the quietness of the outside environment (birdsong, planes, distant traffic etc).

These exercises may be used individually or as a series – they can be used in any order.

You might use them as part of sketchbook time, or within related curriculum subject areas.

Each exercise might take just five or ten minutes, or longer if you’d like to set longer aside.

Think about getting the pupils to make a whole “shy drawing” sketchbook, or use the exercises within existing sketchbooks.

As usual, by enabling your pupils to understand why they are doing these exercises, and when they might want to use them for their own purposes, we are giving the pupils the knowledge and experience to make their own decisions and to draw on these approaches as and when they need to.

Don’t forget to intersperse your drawing activities with reflection activities.

And don’t forget to try the exercises yourself, as the children do.

A “hardly there” drawing.

Use a very hard, very sharp pencil and make a very small drawing in the middle of a the paper. Of course the drawing could shyly grow and explore the paper, or it could stay shrunken in the middle…

The drawing could be of something, which pupils are observing, or it could just be about mark-making. Some children will have more empathy with a line being shy and uncertain, than others.

Develop and Extend:

Use fine cotton, instead of a hard pencil, to “make” a drawing by allowing the cotton to fall on a barely glued surface.

Or use a needle to scratch at the surface of a heavyweight piece of paper or card, to create a scratched drawing.

Invite the children to suggest other ways to make a “barely there” drawing.

Line drawn with scraper pen on plastic milk bottle section.

Techniques which might help you make a shy drawing:

Draw very slowly, tentatively, carefully… and for how long? Take your time and see if it actually takes you a while to slow down and to relax into this exercise. You might start off thinking you are taking it easy, but then as you relax into it you might slow down even more…

Think about the marks your pencil makes when it moves slowly. Are they smooth? Are you relaxed? Does drawing slowly give you more control. Imagine going for a very slow bike ride on a very hot day – imagine how lazy you feel, slowly cycling on the winding path. Imagine a snail crawling across the path, and imagine the petals of some blossom gently floating down and landing on the path. Enjoy the curves, but take them slowly!

Draw from your wrist! Make a drawing by only letting you hand move from the wrist. Make small marks. Pretend your hand is a mouse, your finger tips where you hold the pencil are its nose/whiskers… imagine it sniffing around nervously! These are your marks.

To make a shy drawing, hold your pencil loosely

If you want your pupils to really concentrate on something they are drawing (and they need something to think about if they are making a slow drawing), make sure they are close enough to the object.