Teaching Advanced Drawing & Painting

         At my first student teaching placement at Valley Central High School, I took on the instruction for the Advanced Drawing and Painting class. The group was small, just ten students in 10th and 11th grade, but I was so excited to jump in and get started! My cooperating teacher recommended that my first lesson focus on observational drawing, something the students hadn’t had much experience with in their previous classes, including Studio Art.

       Not wanting to take the traditional still-life route, I started thinking about how to make the project more engaging and personal. That’s when I came up with the idea of having each student create their own still life board using personal items that meant something to them. They arranged their objects in a compositionally interesting way, focusing on overlap and layering, and worked to create a trompe l’oeil effect, making their drawings appear as if the objects were popping right off the page.

      Before starting the final drawings, we spent time building foundational skills. The students created viewfinders out of cardstock to help them frame their compositions and focus on interesting areas of their still lifes. We also completed a colored pencil technique worksheet to practice blending, layering, and burnishing with Prismacolor pencils, which would be their primary medium for the project. Once their drawings were complete, I showed them how to double mount their work to give it a clean, professional presentation for display.

    The students really enjoyed this project because it felt personal and hands-on. They loved incorporating their own belongings into their artwork and experimenting with new materials and techniques. It was so rewarding to see how proud they were of their finished pieces, each one vibrant, detailed, and uniquely theirs.