We Value Value Drawing: Geometric Form Value Drawing

Once my art students had filled page after practicing geometric forms, they created a traditional still life drawing using plastic geometric forms. They were required to create the illusion of space using the following techniques:

• Intuitive perspective (parallel lines going back in space with the back lines being the same length or shorter than the ones in front)
• Overlapping (part of a form can't be seen because there is another in front is covering it up), 
• Vertical placement (the form closest to the front is closest to the bottom of the paper) the highter an object is on a page, the further back it appears in space.
• Shading the objects with 3 to 5 values on the gray scale, to create distinct planes and model round forms.

Students with low vision can't be an an art class where the still life is half way across the room, but they can sometimes see the one that is just a few inches in front of them.

Students who are completely blind, used Wiki Stix to trace the objects or measure the proportions and use the principles we learned during our 3D forms practice drawings. I traced their Wiki Stix drawings in hot glue to make them permanent. Value was created using charcoal or pastels. Some students opted for oil pastels because it was less messy, but we only had one gray oil pastel in each box, so that had to be mixed on the drawing with a white or a black to create a second gray.

The light source had to be consistent, meaning every object was dark on the same side and the cast shadow was going in the same direction as the dark side. Highlights were made by leaving paper white or using the eraser to go back in and brighten it up. The edge of a piece of paper was used to use as a stencil and smudge against which created sharp edges.

These basic drawing skills will be used in upcoming projects, and I hope that students will be able to build on them the rest of their lives.

Value Drawing with Simple Cardboard Planes

It's been "all prom all the time," in my classroom recently.  My students and I have been trying to finish making big backdrops and table decorations for awhile. Of course, I have still also taught the curriculum with the standards I calendared at the beginning of the year, but rather than using a draped piece of fabric, or paper bags for a still life, I had my students do value drawings from the cardboard objects about to be sky scrapers for our New York themed dance.


They had to try to remember how two point linear perspective worked, but then the lines of their drawing disappeared as the planes were filled in with value. We stuck to three shades of gray, and in fact, I gave them gray pastel for the lighter areas rather than having them figure out how to lighten it.

Because this project was simplified, it only took an hour to complete.  The following class period, I gave students the freedom to make anything they wanted with charcoal on paper, which, for the most part ended up being a big mushy blob of gray.  This gave me a chance to teach the technique of using an eraser as a drawing tool to lighten.  Below is a result of a cowboy done using that process.

Value Drawing of Geometric Forms

Observational Drawing is probably the greatest challenge for students with visual impairments. If they can't really see what they are supposed to draw, how are they supposed to draw it? And it is especially tricky when the visual illusion of a 3D form is so different from the form itself. Take a cube, which is made up of six squares each with four right angles, but is drawn using three diamonds-no right angles. A cylinder is made with a circle on each end, but the illusion of cylinder requires the only circle included, to be replaced with an eclipse. 

For those who are completely blind, it became more of a lesson in following directions and learning about how sighted people see the three dimensional world with illusions rather than necessarily truth. They could measure size relations between objects with their hands and then try to replicate that with wikisticks.  Then it was a matter of explaining light sources and have them draw with charcoal on one side and smudging on the other.

My students may not become wealthy artists years from now, but they will be able to tell you the difference between a shape and a form (even many adults make the mistake of saying "3D shapes"), that the medium of charcoal is essentially burnt wood, and explain what value is and why it is important. Mission accomplished.

Fabric Drawings to Teach Value

If fabric studies were good enough for Leonardo DaVinci to do in the Renaissance, they're good enough for me to do in the classroom. The use of lights and darks, value, is required to draw fabric in a way that looks three dimensional. The deeper the fold in the fabric, the darker the value on the drawing.
In this drawing Leonardo uses a middle ground and saved the lightest value for the highlights.

Below are some examples of work from my students, who are visually impaired. A couple of them had to sit very close to the still life; others, had to take a picture to print or view on an iPad just a few inches from their face.

Here is the work of a student with even less vision. There are no specifics when it comes to value and fabric folds in this drawing.

Students with no vision would feel the still life, and I would help them mimic the folds in the fabric with wiki sticks, which they would then use as guidelines when adding the value.