A new way to draw

13 year old

Last winter, I challenged the teen class to try drawing in a new way- with an eraser.

It is harder than it looks!

But once the students get the hang of creating different values by erasing at different pressures, the results are quite interesting. It was a great lesson in having them really pay attention to whites and darks.

The above student liked it so much, she covered an entire large paper, instead of just an animal head like I suggested.

This past Thursday, Seymour Art Gallery asked if I would come out and work with a group of grade 5 and grade 6 students who were visiting the gallery from Richmond, BC.  There were 35 students who listened to a talk by the curator and then explored a project with me.

The artist on exhibition is M.A. Tateishi.  Tateishi creates a full artwork and then covers it with another artwork, the layers of completed works are up to 15 layers deep on each piece!  Then Tateishi begins to tear away, revealing different layers, finally applying a resin to complete the piece. The exhibition is called, "Secrets" and the works are quite breathtaking.

I wanted to come up with a project that was inspired by M.A. Tateishi's artwork, but of course with only an hour, 35 students, and keeping in mind we would be working within the gallery and mess needed to be minimal, I knew it would have to also be quite different than Tateishi's work.

While the curator and I were brainstorming, I remembered the elephant project done months earlier with the eraser. It seemed that "taking away" the pencil markings would tie in nicely with the "taking away" of Tateishi's art displayed in the gallery. The Curator agreed, plus no real mess with paper, pencil and eraser the only supplies needed. We had an idea!

So after the students had a chance to get up and really look at the works after the curator's talk, we got down to having some fun.

I explained they would be creating artwork with items they each had in their desk at school. Well at least I thought they had them in their desk at school, until one of them spoke for the group and informed me I obviously went to school with the dinosaurs because their classroom had computers at their desk...NOT pencils and erasers. The teacher tried to ease my pain as I came to terms that I was in fact very old, by telling me she did have pencils and erasers in her desk.

sigh

So once my brain stopped reeling that pencils and erasers to today's students sounds as crazy as slates and chalk did to me when growing up, we got down to work. I asked them to each create the outline of their subject's shape and then shade it in darkly with the side of their pencil.

Once done, they began drawing with a simple Pink Pearl eraser.

I walked around making suggestions and encouraging them to try to get at least 4 to 5 different values. I also let them know they were more than welcome to go back and add more pencil if they felt they had taken away too much, until they were happy with the work.

I had brought in some reference material of animals, along with lemons, raspberries and pears. (some of Tateishi's titles are "Pumpkin Pie", Lemon Meringue Pie", and Raspberry Pie") Some students chose to work with these and then some went other directions.

Like creating snowmen

or finding inspiration in the exit sign overhead. I love when artist find inspiration in very simple, everyday things we take for granted.

Others got very creative and combined a variety of animals together. This is part unicorn, pig, and beaver.  Love it.

Then there were students who really went off the beaten path and took the project in directions I had not even thought about before.  This one is inspired by an artist in the gift shop with First Nation ties.

I tried to pick a variety of the pieces to share here so you can see all the amazing things that can be created with just a pencil and eraser. I was quite impressed with each and every student in the gallery that day. It is always interesting to see how many ways there are to interpret a simple idea and I always enjoy seeing each child's unique personality come out in their artwork. 

I hope they enjoyed the morning as much as I did. Thank you Seymour Art Gallery for inviting me over to work with this great group of students. Seymour Art Gallery and their curator offer some very exciting opportunities for school groups in the community and I could not recommend enough for people to enrich student's lives with the programming available at the gallery.