Starters for 10 – Using Sketchbooks in the morning
Once you have made or personalised your sketchbooks, to start getting pupils into the sketchbook habit, try giving all pupils a “sketchbook start” to their day.
Using sketchbooks at the beginning of the school day can help pupils make the transition from arriving to settling for work. They help focus the children and get them to start thinking and responding creatively.
Here are 10 x ten minute simple sketchbook starters – Pls add your own via the comment box below for all to share.
1. Make a shy drawing – feel shy when you draw, move only your fingers or wrist, draw quietly… sensitively…
2. Make a loud drawing – use dark or bright drawing materials, make vigorous marks, drawing quickly. It should be the drawing which is noisy – not the person!
3. Draw, collage or paint a pattern inspired by the words: “twirling, growing, happy”. The “pattern” must cover the whole page and go to all the edges. Change the words if you prefer…
4. Draw ants, spiders, bugs, butterflies. Draw only very small creatures on your page, all over your page. Place a piece of tracing paper over your page of creatures, and draw the lines they would have made as they flew or walked – but don’t just use normal pencil lines – use dotted lines, soft lines, scribble lines, curly lines, shy lines… Don’t draw so many lines your creatures are covered, and think where the lines are going. use cellotape to stick the tracing paper over your drawing of creatures on one side (to make a page you can turn).
5. Sitting in your place, look around the room. Fix your eyes on a corner of the room which is far away, and start drawing your version of it on your paper. Don’t worry if you can’t see detail – get your impression down on paper. Draw out from the corner you have chosen – remember the “corner” might not be an actual corner of the room, but a corner created by a shelf, or window or bookcase, or curtain… Fill your page
6. Get some lego (or other similar elemental toy), and draw the elements on your page. have them close to you so you can touch them and turn them over before you draw them, so you really know what they’re like – but don’t start building with them (yet). Use colour as well as pencil. Design a few lego shapes of your own.
7. Build with the lego (or similar) for just a minute or so, and draw what you have built.
8. Choose a paragraph out of a story book and read it out loud. Write it on a board too so it can be seen. Re-write the story on a sketchbook page, replacing words with images wherever possible. Be as inventive as you can.
9. Let you tongue feel what your teeth feel like, and feel what your gums are like. Don’t put your fingers in your mouth. Then make a drawing about what you think your mouth/teeth/gums feels like (not looks like)
10. Put a board in the classroom and invite pupils to write their suggestions for ten minute starters…
Drawing and composition
This activity was suggested by Yumi Okuda and explores the sketchbook page as a space, and encourages experimentation with composition and scale.
Lay out some objects on the table – leave some space between each object Open your sketchbook to a full spread double page (i.e. use both pages) Start by drawing one object on the page Turn the sketchbook around to it’s side and draw another object on the same page Look at your work so far – look at the white space of the page, and lines of the objects you have drawn. You can reorder the objects (i.e. don’t draw them in the same composition/arrangement as they are on the table – make your sketchbook page something different. Draw another of the objects in a part of the white space Keep turning, looking and drawing Enjoy how your page has no real up or down!
OR
Experiment with creating a sense of distance – Choose one object and draw it as small as possible, and choose another and draw it as large as possible.
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
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:
Line drawn with scraper pen on plastic milk bottle section.
Techniques which might help you make a shy drawing:
Drawing speed
This exercise can be used during sketchbook time as a way of focussing the mind, as well as a way of improving drawing and looking skills. It can take five minutes, or much longer, depending upon how you present the activity. Again as a teacher it might be beneficial if you try this activity at the same time as your pupils.
Speed might not be a word which you associate with drawing, but in fact when children (or adults) become frustrated with a drawing, it might be because the speed with which they are looking at the object, and the speed with which they are drawing, are not well matched. The hand might be moving to draw before the eye sees!
Exercise:
1. Set up several small collections of objects on each table for the pupils to draw. It is vital that each pupil can see the objects easily.
2. Ask your pupils to take a minute to let their eyes wander over the object (in silence). Ask them to become aware of how slowly they can look… that is to say to become aware of their eyes moving slowly around the object, taking in its details.
3. Then ask them to pick up their pencil, and begin to draw the object, this time matching the speed of which they make marks on the paper, with the speed at which they look. If you think the pencils are moving to quickly, ask them to slow down their looking and drawing still further.
4. Remind them that their pencil should move across the paper at the same speed as their eye moves over the object. Tell them not to worry about what the drawing looks like – but to concentrate more on how it feels to match the speed of drawing and speed of looking. The end result of the drawing is less important than bringing together drawing and looking as one continuous action, and acknowledging what this feels like.
5. After an agreed time (say 5 minutes) get them to stop drawing and have a look at their drawing. Get the pupils to label it “slow drawing, 5 minutes).
6. Remind them that they can come back and try this exercise whenever they feel frustrated with their drawings, or if they feel they need to relax or calm down. By reminding them what this exercises is good for, you can give it to the pupils as something they can come back to, and use, when they feel the need.
