Melted Still life

Grade Level

11-12

Duration

10 classes, 45 minutes

Materials

Graded Pencils

Media

Pencil

Lesson Objectives

For the student to:
Draw a still life of basic forms with accuracy in depicting space and form.
Use imagination and understanding of form to deconstruct and/or distort the still life.

Introductory Activity

Within a curriculum that leads up to this assignment, students need to have worked with basic forms, rendering basic forms and cast shadows.
Introduction activities can include looking at artists who distort form in their art work (Salvador Dalí for example), practicing drawing form, thumbnails to practice composition, and visualization exercises on imaging how to distort a form (Is the form hollow? Is it solid? Is it melting?).

Lesson Process

Set up a still life with basic forms, something like these. Use a spot light.
Use a good sheet of drawing paper and have students do a light line drawing of the still life.
Then the students can start lightly planning how to alter, distort, melt, the still life. Sometimes students will puncture a hole in a piece of paper or take clay to simulate an effect and see how might would fall on it.
Develop value and form with graded pencils.
When complete had students cut out the negative space and mounted it in back mat board.