I have enjoyed introducing very large sheets of drawing paper to children recently. Each time I do it, I am met with the same excited reaction from the kids and they are always very eager to get started.
Drawing big is something I am always stressing in the studio because when children begin to "draw big" they also loosen up, which usually brings out much better sketches leading to very happy kids.
And shocked parents who will usually ask, "Did you really do this?"
I have a large roll of charcoal paper at the studio. For this project I rolled it out on the floor and taped it down. With a full camp of 8 students, there was not much space to walk around once they were all taped. As I was getting the project ready the kids' eyes grew wider and wider and they continued to ask me what were we doing with that paper.
Our theme this day in the "Creatures Big and Small" camp was underwater creatures. Each child picked some creature from underwater that interested them and sat down on the floor in front of a large paper.
To give you an idea of the size they were working on, here is one just as it was completed. You can see the reference picture at the bottom.
For some of the younger children, the paper was almost bigger than they were! To start the project, I gave each child a pencil poked through a paper plate. As if the large paper wasn't intriguing enough, now I was handing them something strange to draw with too. I told them I wanted them to first create a blind contour drawing of their creature and to not worry if they drew off the paper. I wanted them to try to cover the entire thing.
The kids realized quickly they could not cover the paper sitting in one place. They had to reach, crawl, and really work their muscles in order to draw all over the paper. When they were finished with the blind contour drawing, I gathered the plates and pencils while handing out vine charcoal.
5 year old, electric eel
How amazing is this eel? What I really love is that he drew the shrimp the eel had captured in the original pencil sketch but decided to not do anything else to it. The contrast between the shrimp and the eel is quite wonderful in my opinion and I was very excited that he made such a choice at such a young age. I love the movement and the bold lines of this work too. I think this is the perfect example of what can happen when you give young children very large paper.
7 year old, sand sting ray
When they were finished with the vine charcoal and had made all the changes they wanted to their blind contour drawing, I traded the vine charcoal for very large block charcoal. I then asked them to find all the dark shades on their animal and color it in.
I love the way the artist above interpreted the ray lying in the sand with the circle. He chose a pretty complicated reference picture with the ray half buried. I also like that although later in the project I offered a rainbow of color with pastel, he chose to keep a very limited color palette. It was a really terrific choice on his part.
4 year old
Once the kids had put shading into the drawing, I offered them some chalk pastel to work with also. They went back into their work and added color. I reminded them they did not have to use the same colors they saw on the reference, as artist they could choose to use color anyway they wanted in their drawings.
There are no words for how precious the above fish turned out. Her paper truly was bigger than she was and she spent a lot of time having to move all around it in order to complete the artwork.
10 year old, sea turtle
I really like the way this ten year old decided to tackle the shell of the sea turtle by making it into a checker board. She spent so much time thinking through where to put each different color to create the right combination. It was so impressive to see someone her age really think about placement of color and make such well thought out and deliberate decisions.
6 year old, sea turtle
And just imagine what this six year looked like at the end of the project after smearing everything across a paper this size! I'm not sure why she wanted to do that, but man did it bring her extreme satisfaction. Along with turning her into a hot mess of charcoal and color pastel smudges. But she had fun.
9 year old, clown fish
What a wonderful way to create anemones! You can almost see them moving in the current of the water while the fish is safely hidden inside. And I love how she edited the color in the work also, just adding a bit of purple at the top was a great decision.
5 year old, snake
Now although there was a theme of animal for each day of the camp, if a child really wanted to draw something else I let them. After all, a child who is enjoying what they are drawing is far more likely to focus and be open to exploring my suggestions and putting time into creating something wonderful than if they are doing something they just feel so-so about because it falls within the theme.
Plus I really believe if anyone is going to work hard and spend a lot of time creating something, they should really like the subject matter.
So this five year old created a snake. And what a stinkin' cute snake it is too! Love those scales.
Other than learning pastel and charcoal are really messy, the kids also discovered that drawing this big is tiring. They used a lot of muscle to make drawing strokes this large. They were moving constantly to reach the edges of the paper and it was a good thing parents arrived for pick up as they were finished because I think everyone was looking for some downtime to rest.
I think I had to mop my floors five times in order to pick up all the dust left behind, but it was well worth it to see these amazing creations come to life. I will say that for the rest of the week, I did not have to suggest drawing big again to loosen a child's sketch up. They each did it instinctively for the rest of the week- well worth the multiple times I had to mop the floor!
I think the kids enjoyed the end result of this project also. Seeing their artwork at such a large scale creates quite a statement and I hope they have a wall in their room where they can place their "posters" of these amazing underwater creatures....and a snake.
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