Lesson: Drawing Everyday Objects

During this activity, students explore different types of mark-making using pencils. Mark-making describes the various line qualities in a drawing and can be used to explain the texture or pattern in an artwork. Artists use different qualities of lines to create texture and pattern in drawings. They also utilize a variety of other drawing materials, such as colored pencils, pens, or markers.

Learning Objectives

  • Be able to give examples and define techniques.
  • Improve their art vocabulary by using key terms during discussions.
  • Create a composition using different kinds of mark-making techniques.
  • Analyze their work and drawings made by other students through group and individual discussions.

Materials

  • Paper
  • Erasers
  • Sharpener
  • Large drawing paper (18 x 24 inches)
  • Pencils (HB, 2B, 4B, or 6B if available)
  • Objects to draw (everyday items from the classroom or brought from home)
  • Pens (optional)
  • Colored pencils (optional)
  • Markers (optional)

Explore Drawing Techniques

Set up a still life (with two or more objects) in a central location where all students can see it. Choose familiar objects found in the classroom or brought from home.

Divide a large piece of drawing paper (18 x 24 inches) into six rectangles of the same size. (You can also use six pieces of regular paper [8.5 x 11 inches].) Start at the upper left and draw the still life six times. Use one of the six techniques in each box: scribbling, gesture, light and heavy pressure, contour, hatching, and crosshatching. Notice the relationships between each technique.

Begin with scribbling. Start in the middle of the object and make circular motions that move outward to capture the overall shape. Work quickly to complete this drawing in less than two minutes.

Next is gesture drawing. Again, work quickly to capture the overall shape on the object. Unlike scribbling, the motions are longer and are not always in a circular motion. Keep your pencil on the paper and sketch the objects in less than a minute.

Create another gesture drawing, but this time apply light and heavy pressure to add shadows. Use light pressure in highlighted areas and heavy pressure for shadows. You can also experiment with gentle and firm pressure to create a gradient, the transition between light and dark areas. Pause here and compare the first three techniques.

Contour drawing uses continuous long lines to convey an object's shape. The result is an outline. Try not to go over a line too many times. The repetition produces a scratchy effect instead of a continuous smooth line.

Use hatching to fill in the forms of another contour drawing. Combine light and heavy pressure with the hatching to add shadows and highlights. Remember: keep the lines separate so they don’t cross. Lines placed closely together make areas look darker.

Use crosshatching to fill in objects on a third contour drawing. This technique lends a sense of direction in a drawing, for example, by making the apple appear round. Combine crosshatching with light and heavy pressure to add layers, texture, and shadows to objects in the drawing. Lightly erase areas to create highlights.

Take a look at all the techniques. What are their similarities and differences?

Extension

Dive deeper into the different techniques with a more extended drawing project. This longer project could be a self-portrait, larger still life, or landscape. Have students use at least two of the above techniques to complete their drawing. This is also an opportunity to add color with colored pencils, markers, pens, or crayons.

Core Arts Standards

VA:Cr2.1.7a Demonstrate persistence in developing skills with various materials, methods, and approaches in creating works of art or design.

VA:Cr2.3.7a Apply visual organizational strategies to design and produce a work of art, design, or media that clearly communicates information or ideas.

VA:Re8.1.7a Interpret art by analyzing artmaking approaches, the characteristics of form and structure, relevant contextual information, subject matter, and use of media to identify ideas and mood conveyed.

You may also like

We look slightly down onto a crush of pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, wagons, and streetcars enclosed by a row of densely spaced buildings and skyscrapers opposite us in this horizontal painting. The street in front of us is alive with action but the overall color palette is subdued with burgundy red, grays, and black, punctuated by bright spots of harvest yellow, shamrock green, apple red, and white. Most of the people wear long dark coats and black hats but a few in particular draw the eye. For instance, in a patch of sunlight in the lower right corner, three women wearing light blue, scarlet-red, or emerald-green dresses stand out from the crowd. The sunlight also highlights a white spot on the ground, probably snow, amid the crowd to our right. Beyond the band of people in the street close to us, more people fill in the space around carriages, wagons, and trolleys, and a large horse-drawn cart piled with large yellow blocks, perhaps hay, at the center of the composition. A little in the distance to our left, a few bare trees stand around a patch of white ground. Beyond that, in the top half of the painting, city buildings are blocked in with rectangles of muted red, gray, and tan. Shorter buildings, about six to ten stories high, cluster in front of the taller buildings that reach off the top edge of the painting. The band of skyscrapers is broken only by a gray patch of sky visible in a gap between the buildings to our right of center, along the top of the canvas. White smoke rises from a few chimneys and billboards and advertisements are painted onto the fronts of some of the buildings. The paint is loosely applied, so many of the people and objects are created with only a few swipes of the brush, which makes many of the details indistinct. The artist signed the work with pine-green paint near the lower left corner: “Geo Bellows.”

Educational Resource:  Exploring Identity through Modern Art

How do artists draw on memories and experiences to create art that reflects their identities? How does an artist’s connection to place spark inspiration? Through guided looking, sketching, and writing activities, students will consider how artists explore identity through their art.

Two women with pale skin look out at us from the other side of a rectangular window opening with a shadowy interior behind them in this vertical painting. On our right, in the lower third of the composition, one young woman leans toward us over her left arm, which rests along the window ledge. She bends her right arm and props her chin on her fist. She looks at us with dark brown eyes under dark brows. She has shiny chestnut-brown hair with a strawberry-red bow on the right side of her head, to our left. She has a straight nose, and her full pink lips curve up in a smile. She wears a gossamer-white dress with a wide neckline trimmed in dark gray, with another red bow on the front of her chest. Her voluminous sleeves are pushed back to her elbows. To our left, a second woman peeks around a partially opened shutter. She is slightly older, and she stands next to the first woman with her body facing us. She tilts her head and also gazes at us with dark eyes under dark brown brows. She has dark brown hair covered by an oyster-white shawl. She holds the shawl up with her right hand to cover the bottom half of her face. Her mouth is hidden but her eyes crinkle as if in a smile. Her left arm bends at the elbow as she grasps the open shutter. She also wears a white shirt pushed back to her elbows, and a rose-pink skirt. The frame of the window runs parallel to the sides and bottom of the canvas. The room behind them is black in shadow.

Educational Resource:  Spanish Art

During this two-building field trip, students explore and compare and contrast the style, subject matter, and technique of artists ranging from El Greco to Picasso.

Four people with black skin are squeezed into a narrow boat on bright, turquoise-colored water that nearly fills this stylized, square painting. All four sides of the unstretched canvas are lined with six gromets spaced along each edge. The boat approaches a carnival-like tunnel near the upper right corner. Cartoon ghosts loom at the tunnel entrance and a translucent, veil-like ghost hovers over the left half of the painting. The horizon comes almost to the top of the canvas, where white clouds float against an azure-blue sky. A long, lemon-yellow line curls back and forth in a tight, curving zigzag pattern that widens out from a tiny sun setting on the horizon. A red cross on a white field floats near the upper left. At the top center, the word “WOW” appears in white letters within a crimson-red, bursting speech bubble with long trailing tendrils, like an exploded firework. Below the boat and against the water to our right, the word “FUN” has been overlaid with a white square so the tall, white letters are barely visible. The words “GREAT AMERICA” appear in a curling banner across the bottom half of the painting.

Educational Resource:  Breaking the Rules

What is modern about modern art? Students investigate how artists "break the rules" when they depart from realistic representation, use innovative techniques, and engage the viewer as a partner in creating meaning-making.