Zines and Sketching Class - Lesson 2

I just finished teaching my second lesson in my Zines and Sketching class. Of course, I stressed and over-prepared for this lesson. I planned to do some sketching and then get into some Collage with my students. I practiced at home and loaded all the supplies - paper, paint, old magazines, fabric, matte medium, glue, scissors, markers, collage examples and on and on. I even made a couple more hand-made sketchbooks in case the students had totally filled theirs up. I had two large baskets full of supplies to schlep to the school...and it was raining all day.

I had hoped to do some sketching of trees outside but that was not about to happen in the rain so I had to think of a plan B. I had a postcard book of Canadian Group of Seven Landscape paintings with me so I let my students choose one to sketch. I asked them to sketch the main shapes of the composition first and later work on the details. They began in pencil and then they outlined the whole sketch in black fine liner or marker. This became a lesson in crosshatching. They were told to determine the darkest darks and colour those in with a black marker. Then they were to determine the next lightest value which was still dark but less dark than the darkest. This value they crosshatched extensively. As they did this, their landscape began to take on some life. As the values lightened, the students used lighter cross hatching. This exercise took the whole hour and a half and they still were not totally complete however, I think they started to get the idea and I think they did a really great job!

Oh yes, and due to it being Halloween, I only had 4 of my 9 students. Some things are just out of our control and we just have to roll with it. The four of us still had an enjoyable time of learning together.