it was a dark and stormy night on casey street.

We have had some extreme weather for San Diego the past week. Hail and rain! 

I recently discovered the work of Julien Colombier. He makes drawings on black surfaces- paper, canvas, plaster walls. I love his sense of touch. How he manipulates light and dark with shifts in his hand pressure. It's also interesting to see how his vocabulary of images repeats, varies, and evolves as he produces each drawing. 

One of his drawings was a great fit for the stormy weather we have been experiencing. It's called ZZtop Apocalypse. "Charger" bolts, shading, and perspective? Score.

I shared images from Julien's website with each class and discussed his use of light and dark to make things look 3d. We talked about what you have to do to make dark and light values on black paper instead of white paper. (You reverse your usual process- press had for light and soft for dark on black.)

I then shared ZZtop. I focused on light and dark, and I also introduced the concept of one point perspective. Julien used it to make the house look like they were lined up on a real street. This was their first lesson in perspective this year.  I think this image is a great intro to the concept because it is simple enough for many students to achieve success.

I told the students we would be making a drawing together based on this particular image and then I shared a short video of Julien working. The students LOVED the video. Some didn't love the music, but they really enjoyed seeing Julien work. Student engagement in full effect:)

We then drew out the lightning image together. I modeled the perspective, lightning bolts, and coloring shapes. The visual vocab of the finished drawings are similar, but the visual variations are very interesting too.

a little bit halloween.

To wrap up my first four week rotation with the 5th graders I decided to do a project based on an image created by the illustrator Saul Steinberg.

This particular illustration combines an abstract style with a sense of deep space due to his use of one point perspective of the buildings along the street. It also has a bit of Steinberg's trademark humor with the inclusion of the simplified, "scary" characters lining the street.

The 5th graders had been examining and creating 3 dimensional space through the use of diagonal lines, overlapping, and shading on their previous two projects, so I thought this project would be an entertaining way to take things a step further and introduce them to one point perspective in art.

I also took this project as an opportunity to revisit relief printmaking as an artistic process. Our students do a couple of these each year, while experimenting with different techniques, styles, and colors. With relief printing, you can not shade or blend things in like a pencil drawing. You need to use line patterns or invented textures to create different values. Even after making prints every year, most of our students never tire of the excitement you feel as you pull the paper back from the inked printing plate and discover the image that has been transferred. It's like magic to them. And me.

1. introduce students to Steinberg's work and his use of perspective and shading even in more abstract images

2. guided practice with one point perspective buildings

3. trace edges of styrofoam plate onto tracing paper

4. draw city street with one point perspective on tracing paper (still guided)

5. add characters to the street, getting smaller and smaller as they go back, like the buildings

6. transfer tracing paper image to styrofoam- drawing place on top of styrofoam, trace over drawn image making sure you indent the styrofoam as you go

7. remove tracing paper and go over indented lines on the styrofoam directly with pencil

8. ink plate

9. transfer inked image on plate to print paper- lay plate ink side down on paper, flip both over, and rub from the back with consistent medium pressure, peel paper from plate, and voila!

10. repeat print process if time allows