Drawing is a great way to engage all students, but especially those who struggle with discussion- or language-based activities. All of these drawing activities take the pressure off of making something "perfect" and instead focus on the process of drawing as a tool for exploration and close looking. There are many different types of drawing activities you can use. Just choose the ones that align most closely with your goals and objectives. Giving students time and tools for close looking may seem obvious, but one of the biggest challenges I hear from teachers, is getting students to slow down and look at a work of art. A View Finder is a great way to focus students' cones and rods as they take in complex visual information. A View Finder can be any object, such as an index card with a square cut out of it, which obscures anything outside of a designated viewing area. Such a tool can be especially useful for engaging younger kids, who have a harder time sitting still. We find that giving them something physical to look through helps them channel that excess to capture their observations. I will often give students a viewfinder as a tool for focusing can gain a deeper understanding of the visual elements that make up the work of art. This activity will also allow students to see the differences between specific areas of an artwork, particularly abstract works of art. " Observational Drawing gets the hand, the eyes and the brain all working together to collect as much visual data as possible from a work of art. Sometimes I just want students to spend time looking closely at a work of art independently and without discussion. In this format, I would give students paper and pencil and just have them draw exactly what they see. I would reinforce that this is not about creating a great work of art, but about seeing. If you want a more structured and less open-ended approach, you might want to also engage your students in guided observational drawing. Depending on your goals, you can highlight areas of the composition or specific visual elements. Lines, shapes, colors, pattern, form, and ask students to focus in and document through drawing whichever elements you want to focus on. One of my favorite activities to do with students and teachers, is an activity called Draw and Describe. This is a great activity for collecting information about a work of art. This activity helps to highlight the differences between objective or observable and subjective or more interpretive information that we share about works of art. Here's the parameters, the sort of rules I am going to set about this process. Drawer you cannot asked questions. You are just drawing. Describers you cannot react to the Drawer's drawing. Ok, you are simply looking at what's in front of you. You're join to describe it to your partner, who's then going to draw it. The person drawing is not going to be asking you any questions. They are just going to draw what they hear you saying. Alright and get to it, and you're going to be doing this for a few minutes. We're going to pause I will let you know, but go ahead and get started. After they are finished, lead a debrief conversation. Ask the drawers and describers to share and reflect on their experiences. One of the other things I wanted to talk about here, is this idea of things being objective and subjective. So how does that kind of fit in to this experience that you had through this activity. When you think about being objective and subjective whether in perception or the use of language, or drawing. How did that factor in at all? It just made me realize how she was going to see things through my eyes. And how much of a responsibility that was. At the beginning of the activity, I had to trust her. We had our eyes shut, she led us in, and being led by someone. I just know it was difficult to not look at it, I had to wait to fix the eagle right there. It should be a little higher. I like to do this exercise with students ages ten and up, and also with teachers. I think the artworks that work best are ones that are more visually complex and narrative, in particular I love doing this with works of art that are multi media like First Landing Jump by Robert Rauschenberg, but it also works well with paintings, drawing, sculpture or photography. Again, it's important that it's complex enough that it will require students to think carefully about the language they use and be engaging enough that they won't be able to describe everything in less than three-five minutes.
