YHS Art Blog

Sketchbook Assignment Due: Thursday, October 4th

Artists use many different techniques to show value in their drawings. Value can help show form of objects, proximity of objects, and can add interest to an image.
Goal: To copy, line for line, to the best of your ability, the drawing chosen.

• Choose one of the visuals on your table.
• Choose one that uses different methods of adding value.
• Open your sketchbook to a blank page and trace the rectangle of your chosen image on the right-hand page.
• Neatly glue or tape your image onto the left side.
• Copy, using your best effort, the drawing and value techniques of the artist.
• Pay close attention to the relationships of objects to each other(proportions) within the drawing.
• Try to use very similar lines and line variation as what you see in the drawing.

Use pencil/graphite.

Please choose your images thoughtfully; appropriately challenge yourself.

Challenge yourself appropriately. Remember, your sketchbook drawings are a way to demonstrate and document your learning as well as your progress/improvement over time. All students are required to show this.

Assignment due date: Friday, September 28th

Task: Choose a shoe(s) to draw in which you will be able to demonstrate the following:
A strong composition;
Line sensitivity/line variation;
Attention to detail.

This should be a contour drawing. Please include contours that define the edges as well as cross-contours.

A few reminders about creating strong compositions:
• avoid placement at dead center
• diagonals are more active than horizontals
• equal amounts of figure and ground confuse the eye
• sameness is frequently boring

First Homework assignment, due Thursday, Sept. 20 – Positive-negative design
All homework assignments are to be done in your personal FIA-issued sketchbook. Please allow yourself at least 45 minutes to complete this assignment.

• Find a simple but interesting household tool.
Suggestions: scissors, spatula, whisk, fork, pliers – something that challenges your personal ability.
• On a piece of black construction paper, draw the OUTLINE of the tool you have chosen. Before you start, try looking at the tool from different angles and at different positions. You want your outline to be visually interesting. If you need to practice sketching, feel free to use a page or two of your sketchbook for this. Simplifying the outline is fine.
• Now cut out along the outline you have drawn, and also those negative shapes within the contour of the tool, and carefully decide where to place your cutout on the page of your sketchbook. It has to touch at least three edges of the page. (You guessed it, you have to make it pretty big!)
• When you are finished, your page will be a positive-negative composition. The tool should be recognizable.