Painting and Drawing for 12-13 year-olds

Today was the last day of the Fall session at Fleisher, and my last day with a great group of 12-13 year-olds. I'm hoping the all come back next semester, as I felt like they were only just starting to open up and feel comfortable. Below you can see 4 out of the 6 projects we did.Students worked together in teams to make group mark-making drawings, which were then divided and individualized. They then enlarged them drawing using the grid method.

For these object collages students focused on value and prepared by painting three sheets of color in light, medium, and dark values. They also used ink line drawing experiments from a previous project.

Students made 4 different drawings of the same still-life from different angles and by using a different drawing technique for each drawing. Throughout the semester I encouraged a lot of drawing exploration, including blind contour, gesture, line drawing, value drawing, etc. It was interesting to see which drawing styles students seized upon. Several brought in their drawings from home to show me how they continued their explorations-totally unexpected but incredibly rewarding!


Students looked at John Singleton Copley's portraits, especially at how he used objects in hands in order to identify the sitter. So the students used personal objects and painted their hands holding the objects.

Now I get to plan for next semester!!!