LESSON PLANS SPRING TERM 2024 (1st half) lesson 6: ‘Note-taking’ drawing, rapid drawing, action drawing.

This is the last of our three-session 'drawing' project - this time I'm asking my students to work in a much more rapid way, to make visual notes from a sporting image, to be freer and more expressive than we've been so far. This very much isn't about making a beautiful drawing so much as gaining confidence in making rapid visual notes for a possible painting at a later date.

Spring Term 1st half 2024 – Lesson 6. ‘Note-taking’ drawing, rapid drawing, action drawing.

·         You have an action image in front of you!

·         This lesson is not about making a beautiful drawing – it’s about gaining confidence to draw rapidly and loosely as a way of making a visual record, of putting visual information onto your page quickly.

·         Start by sketching a box within which you’ll make your drawing.

·         Look for some in-between spaces between the main subjects. Are there any good shapes between the subjects and the edges of your box?

·         Letting your pencil move loosely and in a scribbling way, begin to form the shapes of your subjects, thinking about the roundness of their arms, legs, bodies. Build up layers of ‘indicative’ scribbling. You can use your eraser to re-negotiate.

·         Add colour to some of the in-between spaces to help you see your subjects more clearly.

·         Work further with a soft dark pencil onto the figures, find some shadows, look for places to increase the tone around and behind them.

Next lesson (after one week half term hols): Bring a colourful magazine and your watercolours. We’re going to do some colour matching and talk about warm and cool colours.