Thursday, January 18, 2018

Artist Trading Cards, Abstract Observational Drawing



I love Observational Drawing, in fact, life drawing was one of my concentrations in college. One of the reasons I love it is because you can do it anywhere with anything. When I bring it into the classroom I try very hard to make it motivating... so in this case, we used candy to observe.  I like the candy for many reasons; It's small, it's inexpensive, it's a gift, there are lots of details, and this is going to be used in an artist trading card swap. That means if these cards are sent to another community across the world, food is a great way to communicate culture.

I wanted to make this a little more non-traditional so I 'abstracted-it-up'... Watch the video below to get a feel for the process of this card.


I loved watching the students work on their pre-planning.  It was a great way to really see how they will handle the final card.  I could see what tips I should mention before the final card and get a feel for the kids who will need a little extra guidance.  I can also see who needs more of a challenge and encourage likewise. What do they call that again?? Oh yeah, formative assessment (that's right, art teachers use assessment every day to guide their instruction) 


As the video suggested, we cut and pasted the divided drawing onto one of our amazing cards created earlier this year. This is what allows for artistic choice and makes our cards look unique and complex. Check out all the paper designs I did with my class in this previous post.



The students did a really good job attaching the still life to the ATC but these cards are going to be traveling through the mail to artist all over the world in just a couple of weeks (see Artist Trading Card Swap information),  I wanted to make sure they are really stuck down and have a beautiful finish so I covered each finished card with Mod Podge



We are proud to send these cards out to our #ATCswap friends all over the country and world!





No comments:

Post a Comment