Still Life Drawings

Students were practicing shading before moving onto 3D projects, because they will have to be able to draw a three dimensional object for their end of the year SLO test. Every artist learned their fundamentals of art starting out drawing still life and lots of study drawings! Still life drawings are not always the most exciting projects but they are very important because it teaches one how to carefully observe shadows and highlights as well as proportions and creating an interesting composition. I introduced the unit with a Prezi showing the students how well known artists started out with still life drawings and paintings and developed their own style over time helped them to notice the importance of this assignment.. The artists I discussed included Salvador Dali, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Pablo Picasso. Showing the kids these well known artists and how their style developed over time but they started out will still life drawings and paintings, helped the students notice the importance of this assignment. The requirements for their still life was to start with a sketch of an interesting composition and the final drawing had to include at least one metal object, one glass object, and some fabric. My mentor teacher and I set up a still life of all kinds of objects and things to draw so the students would have plenty of options for compositions.

Here are some examples of successful still life drawings that had a full range of value and created the most depth using shading.