My hope this upcoming school year is to practice with the children figure drawing. It is always a fun activity to do! I find that after a lesson in figure study, the students are often more confidant in drawing people in their art works. I like to use the "hamburger and hotdog" technique when teaching children to draw figures. I explain to the students how the connecting parts of figures (elbows, knees, etc) are the hamburgers, and the longer parts (arms, legs, etc) are the hot dogs. It usually helps the students grasp the concept of full figures to draw instead of stick figures. For the more advanced students I then show them how to "hotdog" gets skinner near the joints to make it look more realistic.
Here are some photos of the students at Jefferson working on their figure drawing. We practiced together by having the students each pose for one minute. The students drew their peer using large sheets of paper and crayons. I explained to the students to focus on the form of the body and not on the clothing and details of the person. A lot of the kids had a good time and, of course, they all wanted to volunteer to be posing!
One way to extend figure drawing to another project is to have the students find a figure they like in a magazine. Have them carefully cut out that image and glue it to a piece of paper. On the other side of the paper, have the students try to recreate the figure as it is shown. I like the students to begin in pencil and then complete their drawings in colored pencil. This is also a great lesson to have the students practice value scales, so that the clothing can be made to look like it has shadows and wrinkles by using different pressures on the colored pencils.
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