After School Art Club: Drawing, Sculpture, Collage and Painting, Part 1 I’ve been working with a group of Year 3 and 4 pupils at Bourn Primary Academy during an after school art club. The sessions are only an hour long, and that includes time to set the room up and clean up at the end, so I decided to do an activity which carried across the whole term, giving the children plenty of time to try new approaches and materials.
I wanted a subject matter which the children would warm to and which would work for both drawing and sculpture. I’d been watching the amazing BBC series The Polar Bear & Me, and was struck by the beautiful forms of the bears – forms which were simple, sculptural and yet recognisable as being “polar bear”. The bears seemed the ideal subject matter (and we even had snow outside!). Even better, the bears would provide us with an opportunity to make individual sculptures, which could then be brought together as a communal artwork.
Session 1 Drawing & Looking
Children were asked to bring in toy polar bears, and I took in photographs of bears. We needed imagery as a starting point and the fact that the sources were mixed worked well – children could find their own way in. The children were given a speedy introduction to different drawing media, and then we started off with simple “backwards forwards” sketches of the bears. Backwards forwards sketching is a great tool in getting children to slow down their drawing – giving them time to really look. In essence, the drawing motion is made by moving the wrist from left to right – creating a line which does not leave the page.
While many children feel comfortable exploring new materials, others lack confidence to make a drawing outside their comfort zone – put off by the white paper and unable to visualise their drawing. I never like to draw directly on the paper, but for those children who feel intimidated and can’t get started, I often hold an invisible pencil in my hand and show them where they might “see” the marks appearing – “here might be it’s rounded back… and here it’s head, and look how my hand is moving from the wrist, can you see that…” It’s amazing how this can help children suddenly imagine their drawing on a blank sheet, and then once they can imagine, once they have a clue as to a way in, they are off…
For these backwards forwards sketches we used soft b pencils and allowed about 20 minutes.
