LESSON PLANS SUMMER TERM 2024 (2nd half) Lesson 5: Looking at the drawings of Catherine Nicholson. Drawing stems.

In this lesson I'm asking my students to make line drawings of stems and to build up gradually to create a feeling of a meadow or wild patch in the garden. They can use black pen or well sharpened pencils. Above you can see some of the beautiful work by Catherine Nicholson and be influenced by her love of detail.

Summer Term 2024 (2nd half) Lesson 5: Pen/line drawings of stems (OR completing the magazine images).

·         Take time to finish your magazine images, thinking carefully about the watercolour process.

·         Stems drawings. Choose one stem and make a long and fluid-line drawing of it, crossing from bottom to top of your page. Start on the far left (or far right if you’re left handed) of your page (portrait format).

·         Choose another stem and do the same with this one next to your first stem and leaving a slight gap between the two stems. Choose a third stem and do the same until your page has stems all across it.

·         Return to the first and second stems, and in the gap between them you’re going to draw another stem. This new stem will appear to be behind the first stems, so that any line of this new stem which might overlap the previous stems must actually underlap them. It means that no lines from this next stem will cross over any of the first row of stems, they will appear to go behind them.

·         Gradually build up more and more stems on your page, always filling gaps and making sure the newest lines go behind any previous lines. This way you’ll create a page of abundance!

Next lesson: Complete these drawings, start another similar drawing but this time add watercolour washes to the stems you draw. Perhaps introduce wax resist giving you the freedom to sweep washes across the drawing.