Drawing Lessons

Drawings lessons

 for children

7 - 12 years

  Drawings lessons will resume on 17 November 2012.

The next lesson will be on 17 November from 14h00 to 16h00,

at the St Heliers Community Centre, St Heliers Bay Road, Auckland.

E-mail me at info@theartworkshop.co.nz  to make a booking.
The morning lesson, in Bucklands Beach, Auckland  will resume next year with the start of school term 1. More details to follow.

Remember the FIRST lesson is FREE! Give it a go!

Drawing Victorian Houses

Drawing Victorian Houses

This lesson proved to be great fun for all the students (aged 7 -11) attending the class. We learned that Architecture is the designing and building of structures. We discussed Victorian Architecture in brief,e.g where did the name come from. Some students knew the answer - England's Queen Victoria off course. We learned that Victorian Mansions were different from other houses because they were impressive and symbolized hospitality. They had unique features and distinctive color schemes. We looked at several pictures of Victorian Houses (from library books and the internet).

On the black display board wall I built (as a basic construction) a Victorian House from basic shapes cutouts. This served as an example to remind the students that essentially you can construct a Victorian house using squares, rectangles, half circles columns and triangles.

I gave the students free choice to use stencils, cut out shapes and rulers to construct their Victorian House. After "Building" the houses they used colored pencils or markers to decorate their houses.  Below are photos of some of the students work.

 I got the idea for this lesson from the Deep Space Sparkle blog.

Drawing with Basic Shapes

Silhouette drawn with fine pens on a watercolour background.

Often, at first glance, things will appear to be complicated and most beginning artists will not attempt to make a drawing of what they see.

If you start looking closely you will notice that almost everything is made up of basic shapes, such as circles, dots and lines. 

Drawing becomes much easier if you are able to recognise the shapes in simple as well as complex pictures.

The secret is to build onto the basic shapes in a step by step process.

Why is it easier to draw something when you first draw the shapes?

Because we can all draw basic shapes. See below for examples.

There are many more shapes in geometry as well as nature. Take an old magazine, choose a picture and see how many shapes you can identify. Deconstruct every picture and you will notice how easy it will be to draw that picture. Be aware that the basic shapes might be hidden. Also remember that you might need to change the basic shape slightly to draw the hidden shape, e.g a lopsided oval or triangle.

Be creative and explore basic shapes!