Drawing Ia

Age Level is around 8 and up. These are not designed for younger children.

The Purpose of This Class

To learn to see as an artist sees and apply that skill to drawing. To be more specific, to recognize the size, shape, position/direction of lines, dots, circles, etc. in a defined space.

In order to draw, one must be aware of the size, shape, and location of the lines that make up the subject in relation to imaginary vertical and horizontal reference lines. The boxes that are around the images in these handouts serve as the horizontal and vertical lines. The student should be instructed to pay attention to the location, angle, and shape of the lines inside the boxes. It is not the image as a whole that the student should draw, it is the lines. With practice the student should learn to see as an artist sees.

Both of my children took these classes, one is an artist and one is not. Surprisingly the non-artist child can now draw well. Being able to draw is a minor necessity. To see what my non-artistic child is doing with his drawing skills, visit his lab book page.

How to Evaluate the Student's Work

Because the worksheets on this page are exercises and there is little room for personal creativity, they are easy to evaluate. Basically, you should compare the following points with the original:

The angle of the lines in relation to the space perimeter (The space perimeter is the box surrounding each drawing.)
The placement of the lines within the space (This is described in more detail in the next paragraph.)
If the dots are of similar size
The circles are not dots

The drawings do not have to be a perfect match. If there is a dot in the middle of the square, then the child should draw a dot of similar size in the middle of the square, not on the top, the bottom or the sides of the square. You may need to reinforce this observing of space with hands-on activities if your child does not understand what he is supposed to be focusing on.

One activity that comes to mind is laying out a clock with pennies or pebbles. Make a big circle (12 inches may be big enough) in sand or draw it on a white board that is laying flat. The child should use pennies or some object to make the places of the clock or if you are using a white board the child can draw the places of the clock. The child should place a penny where 12:00 should be first, then 6:00, 3:00, and 9:00. You can move on to 1:00, 2:00, and 4:00, 5:00, and so on, if your child is old enough. I am sure that there are more activities that you can think of that will reinforce placing an item in a particular location inside of a defined space.

See Samples of Evaluated Work

These sheets can be used to supplement the book, Drawing With Children by Mona Brookes.

These handouts are also available in Acrobat version, they have the pdf extension. The Acrobat versions print larger with minimal margin space.

Read these comments before starting this drawing class

Before starting this class, have the students draw a self portrait. Supply them with a recent photo or let them look at a digital photo on the computer or a print out of the photo. Keep the self portrait and photograph in a file or portfolio. After doing these lessons for 6-8 weeks, have them redraw the same photograph. Bring out the initial picture that they drew at the beginning of the class and compare the new one to the old one to see what progress has been made.
Your student does not have to work through all of these sheets to be considered finished with this phase of drawing. You can skip through some the lessons as the student progresses. I had my children do a few every year just to brush up on this particular drawing skill.
Be sure to visit the Evaluated Work pages to see evaluated work and comments.

Lesson Format

The drawing practice sheets below have the same images as the others except these have a different layout.

There are 5 lessons per sheet. Each day the student is to draw the same image 3 times. The practice exercises should not take long, depending on the student's interest they can take from 5 to 10 minutes. The lessons can be considered warm up exercises for other art activities or for handwriting practice.

The practice sheets are listed in order of difficulty. They are all in pdf format.

L01	L06	L11	L16	L21	L26	L31
L02	L07	L12	L17	L22	L27	L32
L03	L08	L13	L18	L23	L28	L33
L04	L09	L14	L19	L24	L29
L05	L10	L15	L20	L25	L30	Blank

Mirror Images

M01	M06	M11	M16
M02	M07	M12	M17
M03	M08	M13	M18
M04	M09	M14	M19
M05	M10	M15

Old Format

The old format worksheets are the earliest versions. The lesson format worksheets were created from these. They are in both web page and acrobat format.