Taking a line for a walk
For our first session back in The Art Room after Christmas, we wanted to take things gently and warmed up our creativity by practicing our drawing skills.
Taking inspiration from the artist Paul Klee who described drawing simply as ‘taking a line for a walk’, we used our pencils freely, without a fully formed endpoint, and enjoyed the discovery of using simple lines and mark-making to sketch out and build an image.
Our very youngest artists showed great effort and dexterity in our preschool session by tracing outlines and shapes with a pencil and cutting along straight lines with scissors to create their own cheerful vase of collaged flowers.
Our Afterschool artists produced a wonderful selection of continuous line drawings. Starting as a doodle to see what shapes or patterns appeared, the children took their pencils for a walk along long, narrow pieces of paper and, using their imagination, experimented with creating a simple, visual narrative to describe a dense strip of forest, the bustle of the high street, or the curving shapes of the ocean. Once warmed up, our younger group explored the idea of adding texture to their next set of drawings by using oil pastels to take a rubbing of a selection of objects with different textured surfaces to represent the scales and markings on a fish. Everyone did a great job at practising the right amount of pressure needed to achieve the desired effect. The colourful results were spectacular!
Our oldest group of children were challenged to use their best observational skills by keeping their pencil on the page at all times when creating their continuous line drawings. Encouraged to slow down and look carefully to find the shapes of the objects displayed before them, each did a great job at trusting where their line would take them without worrying about how the end result would look. It was impressive to see the children push their own boundaries by working at a larger scale, exploring a different drawing material, such as oil pastel or charcoal, working in monochrome, or completing their sketches without the use of an eraser. They should be proud of their effort and willingness to experiment!
Throughout all our sessions we talked about how, just like many skills in life – swimming strokes, tying shoelaces, playing an instrument or cooking a meal – drawing takes practise. The more we do the more confident we feel. Using the right tool for the job and understanding which type of line or mark we chose to make was central to our conversations. Next week we will build on these drawing skills with activities that we hope will encourage the children to test and play with the ideas and feeling with which they choose to create at The Art Room.
