Pencil and Paper

On the fourth day of class we learned a lot about pencils and shading.  Pencils range from soft to hard which are represented by the letters 'B' and 'H'. A '9B' is one of the softest pencils you can find. It is very thick so that the led will not break. The higher  the level of 'B', the softer and darker the color. A '6B' pencil is  dark- leaves a lot of texture.

'H' pencils have clay to the content to make it harder. The higher the level of H the more silvery the color is.

For more information on pencils, check out this wikipedia sight: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil

Paper has a texture- has a tooth, which is a texture and thickness -  (bristol is very fine).  About.com definition of tooth: "

The surface feel of paper is its tooth

. The more tooth a paper has the rougher it feels to the touch. Some inks may adhere poorly to papers that are extremely smooth with very little tooth.

Tooth also refers to a slightly rough finish that takes ink well. It is a preferred surface texture for charcoal and pastel art."

I really liked how Dr. Barney drew this on the board. He emphasized that it is all about learning and practicing the skills.  So much of drawing is about being observant. It is about noticing where the light is hitting and where the shadows are cast. There are a whole range of activities that we can do with our students concerning this. We can have them mimic this drawing like I did (a few pictures below). For a slightly more advanced student we can have them draw pictures of objects and make them 3D by determining the light source and having different values throughout the shape.

He posted this later:

Here are some little experiments that I did on my own. I think that it would be useful to have my students do a similar experimentation with the different hardnesses of pencils. I think that it will stay with them longer if they experiment on their own. Before even telling them what the numbers represent you can give them a variety of pencils and ask questions like: How thick is the led? How hard do you have to press to make it go on dark? Is the color more silver or black? Does it write on your skin easily?

All of the above questions can help students experiment with pencils and understand more about shading.

I practiced shading different 3D objects on my own. It definitely is something that needs a lot of practice. This could be used in a Science experiment when talking about the moon. You could connect it by relating that what we see is dependent upon the light being reflected.

This is a youtube video that explains how to shade different 3D shapes: