LESSON PLANS SUMMER TERM 2023 (2nd half) Finding form with squiggles.

In this lesson I'm asking my students to look at Henry Moore's sheep drawings - to notice how he describes the roundness of the sheep, the forms of their noses and legs, the textures of their contexts (grass, trees etc.) and all with a build up of intuitively placed squiggly lines.

Summer Term 2nd half 2023 – lesson 2: Describing form, tone and texture with a mix of drawing implements.

Looking at the sheep sketches of Henry Moore and the way he describes form in these drawings – bearing in mind that working as a sculptor he needed to understand the 3D form of his subject.

· Choose your sheep picture. Notice that Henry Moore, when drawing his sheep, loosely describes their shapes with a collection of line-fragments, dots, dashes and squiggles. Do the same, lightly, with your pencil. Loosely find your sheep and any background.

· Look along the edges of your sheep. Think about the change over from dark against light to light against dark. Can you build up some squiggly tone behind or around your sheep?

· Gradually intensify the squiggles, make them denser for the darker areas. Look for places where you change the nature of the lines you’re building up (some straighter lines on the legs but also some form lines around them?).

· Think about the roundness of the sheep’s bodies and the roundness of their noses. How does Henry Moore describe these? Think back to last week’s exercise where you changed a flat circle into several different forms. How did you do it?

· As your pencil marks become darker, take the plunge and introduce pen, felt pen etc. Look again at the Henry Moore sketches and see how he builds tone and form-lines with darker pens as he works through the drawing.

· If you finish and have time, swap your sheep image with someone else’s and have another go.

Next lesson: Drawing with a free-running line via the in-between spaces. Bring pencils and/or pens. You can bring a still-life, or you can set up a collection of cups & vessels from the kitchen or you can look across the room at the people in it and use that as your subject.