Super models

Teaching Pre K-8, Nov/Dec 2002 by Healy, John W

Art

CURRICULUM

THAT WORKS

A favorite object can provide inspiration and

visual information for kids' artwork

Children's bedrooms are filled with objects that reflect their interests. These models of cars and planes, action figures, stuffed animals and other unique collectibles are ideal subjects for stimulating original children's art.

The use of models - from plastic airplanes to stuffed plush lions - as a reference for creating artwork has certain advantages over using photographs. As one holds and turns a model, a multitude of viewpoints emerge, and one can see how light makes shadows on the surfaces of the object. Both photographs and models are useful to artists. Each provides information not offered by the other. Models and photographs may, when drawn, be extended, diminished or distorted, but one can only go so far; if a student draws an owl and it looks like a chicken, better examination of the model is needed.

Learning to see

The ability to see an object clearly is sometimes blocked by prior learning experiences. I've seen so much children's artwork that features trees with broccoli tops and circular suns with lines coming out of them. These preconceived notions deny an artist his or her india viduality.

One of my students once showed me a beautiful drawing she'd made from a model. When I asked her if I could hang it up, she said, "Let me put a black outline around the subject and then it will be finished."

This is a regression to the multitude of workbook stamps and cooring books; overly concrete thinking which reduces complicated images to a simple, sometimes inaccurate shape. Areas within outlines are "colored in." Skies are always the same shade of blue, grass is always the same shade of green, and so on. There is little room for imagination - or reality.

A proven technique

The practice of having children draw from a model is sound and useful. Photographs of 19th century drawing and painting classes reveal plaster casts being used in studios as anatomical references. We can use meaningful objects from a child's room to bring this traditional and useful learning concept into the present.

Show your students historical artwork that was created with the help of models - drawings by Michelangelo, Buonarroti, John Singer Sargent and Louis Comfort Tiffany are just a few of the many from which you may choose. If you can get a copy of an artist's study or sketch for the finished piece, show it to the class before you show the completed work of art.

Light and shadow

Ask your students to bring in something from their bedrooms that they can use as a model for a piece of artwork. The object each child chooses should represent one of his or her hobbies or interests, and should not be valuable or breakable.

As a class, brainstorm the ways in which a model differs from a photograph. Both are useful to an artist who is gathering information in order to make art. The main advantage of a model is that it may be viewed and drawn from a multitude of viewpoints in great detail.

Hold a model in your hand. Dim the classroom lights and use a flashlight to illuminate the model from different sides. Discuss the different places where shadows appear on the object as you change the angle of the light source. Place the model on a large piece of white paper. Direct the light of the flashlight at the model, creating a shadow. Distort and elongate the shadow by moving the flashlight closer to, and farther away from, the object.

In pencil, lightly sketch the model in large, general shapes first, and then draw in the detail, adding the object's shadow. Then turn the lights back on and give the students time to create drawings of their models, adding shadows in the appropriate places.

Dr. John W. Healy teaches art at Woodland Middle School, East Meadow, NY and is a Teaching Editor of Teaching K-8.