Digging Deeper With Still Life

Personally expressive compositions to explore new media & techniques.

​Drawing from observation is a core experience in any art program. Often this can take the form of a classical still life exploration. Typically the instructor creates a composition of objects that will be both visually interesting and perhaps challenge their students. When I explore in this way, I make it homework for students to bring in 1 object to create still life collections in groups, providing a few of my own or fabric as a back drop. When students are part of the creation process, I find they are motivated to do better. With this in mind, and knowing most of my students had good phones to take photographs, I assigned them this over a weekend:
 
Collect 5 objects that have meaningful memories attached to themselves. Create a composition of those objects to photograph and paste into a Google Document I have shared with you. If you are unable to take a photo at home, bring in your 5 objects and we will photograph them in class.
 
I showed several examples of what my expectations were with photographs. I even showed bad examples and we discussed why they were “bad.”  (If you hover over the images below you can see my comments about each example.)

When the Google Document was complete, I printed the photographs in color onto paper I have pre-printed with an 8 x 10 inch grid. This was helpful in discussing scale and getting proportions right, but wan also necessary for the final assignment. We have 90 minute classes, so each day I was able to demonstrate a different drawing approach, and had students use their reference image to explore these:

• Blind Drawings
• Gesture Drawing
• Charcoal Drawing
• Ink Transfer
• Watercolor color-blocking

These are some tutorials I created and used for this assignment.

The final assignment would take them 5 more days. That was to use the grid transfer method in a creative way. These were Art 2 students who had already done grid portraits in Art 1. I posted some possibilities, but encouraged students to explore internet resources for ideas. Some ideas they explored included Zentangles, Grids with Post-it notes, Chuck Close style, Ink blot transfer, and more.
 
Students gained an understanding that there is more than one way to approach a subject. They also discovered that each technique imbued their work with a different emotional value. That media can often have an expressive impact on work. I don’t think they would have understood that had they not re-explored their still lives in so many different ways.
 
Once complete, we displayed work with a written explanation of their objects so that viewers would understand the depth of their compositions. If meanings were too personal, I allowed students to be a bit vague in their writing to feel comfortable sharing at their desired level. For example, some objects were gifts from deceased family members but they might not have wanted to write about that in particular.

For additional lessons and resources, visit Firehouse Publications.