LESSON PLANS WINTER 2022 (1st half) lesson 2. Drawing with colour.

In this lesson I'm asking my students to continue looking at their 'Siblings' still-life subjects. They can rearrange the objects, remove or swap objects or change the set-up completely! I would like my students to think about colour (which is full of character) and tone (which has less individual character but might be made up of a rich mix of colours).

Winter term, 1st half 2022. Lesson 2. Still-life ‘Siblings’

Drawing with colour pencils – understanding the tones of the various colours.

· Set up your still life in front of you. Do you need to ‘engineer’ the background? Dark? Light? Plain?

· With your palest colour, and very lightly as we did last week, with a very loose line begin to draw your subject.

· Remember to look first for the in-between spaces. These are the useful shapes which describe the relationship between your objects. On the flat surface of your page these in-between shapes are as important as the objects themselves.

· Just as we did in the previous lesson, as you begin to feel more secure about where a line will be, press harder with your pale colour and even move on to a slightly darker colour to make a bolder line.

· Gradually you’ll understand where you want to increase and develop the tones. To do this you’ll need to use increasingly darker colours and weave them together with the colours you’ve been using.

· If at any point you feel you need to cover your page more efficiently than colour pencils can do, then mix a pale wash and cover your page except for the areas you choose to leave white.

· If a colour needs to retain a certain character (such as ‘blue’ or ‘red’) use colours related to or similar to the colour you’re wanting to show. If on the other hand the colours are very neutral, you’ll need to mix your various colours equally on the page so that no single colour stands out as dominant. This might be something you experiment with on a piece of scrap paper.

· Continue negotiating until you have the drawing you want!

Next lesson: Bring black gel-pens (available from Tesco and WHSmith). Bring watercolours and watercolour paper. Bring two or three tall, dried seed head stems or twiggy branch stems with or without leaves. We’re going to work with pen and wash.