Our talented artists at both Byron House and Senior House have taken up the ‘Access Art’ Drawing challenge and have used a range of media to sketch different subject matter, from feathers to fish and owls. ‘Access Art’ is running an international Drawing Challenge from November 2014 to March 2015 with the aim of widening and reinforcing the children’s drawing skills and encouraging them to experiment with drawing materials.
Senior House Art Teacher, Mrs Sam Downer, explained, “The children sketched mackerel, sprats and feathers before going on to explore the qualities of the materials that they were using to draw with. The children then had a wonderful time experimenting with varying the heaviness and lightness of the lines, dots and other marks that they were making on the paper so as to make their work sing”. Miss Sarah Williams, Form 1 Art Teacher, commented, “The children were encouraged to make their drawings more interesting by varying the types of lines they used”.
The children used continuous line drawing as a way of practising their hand-eye coordination, i.e. never taking the pen or pencil off the paper and moving their pens at the same speed that their eyes looked at the subject matter. By drawing this slowly the children had greater control over the image they were creating and observed detail they might not otherwise have seen. Repeated sketching also helped them to develop their understanding of the subject matter through slow, careful observation. The younger children used B-6B pencil grades to show tone and the older children used charcoal, chalk, graphite sticks and black ink.
For more information about the Drawing Challenge www.accessart.org.uk/join-drawing-challenge/
