A Quarterly Assessment Assignment

Drawing From Life

Drawing real objects is an important learning technique for budding artists. My daughter typically draws from her imagination and while that is okay, drawing imaginary subjects does not add to her skill as much as the painful experience of drawing from life. This year many of her art lessons are drawing from life. This has refined her ability to actually see and faithfully reproduce 3-d objects on a piece of paper. At some point over the next year, I hope to find time to share her art lessons so others can follow in our footsteps. For now, I will briefly discuss her quarterly assessment assignment - the test that counts as a large part of her grade for this past quarter. Important Note: Up to this point, her assignments have led to this particular assignment and that is the why this assignment can count as a large part of her quarterly grade.

The subject for the assignment is a small decaying branch that I found in our backyard. It has the features that I wanted her to draw - contour, texture, shading, to name three, and of course, it is a real object. The branch was set in front of her and she was instructed to draw it. She took several hours spread over 3 days to complete the drawing. She complained a lot at first, but as the hours passed and the drawing started to look like the subject, she stopped complaining and worked with improved concentration. Below is an images of the branch and her drawing.

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