Sofie's Blog :)

In 7th grade, the second unit for art was line drawing.  We experimented with line techniques, like sucumbling, cross-hatching, stipple and much more. We learnt line techniques to show that line can be used to convey shape, texture and tone; the significant concept. The MYP unit question is: How can we communicate visually. We looked at art work by Van-Gogh and  Albrecht Dürer to see the line techniques that they used and how they used them.  In this unit project I drew the sky and the trees for the background, the water for the middle ground, the canoe and the rocks for the foreground.  I took the photos that I liked from the middle school 7th grade field studies, and rearranged them to make one photo.  I put the photos that I thought would be a good drawing for line techniques, onto a pages document and shuffled them around until I found the arrangement that I liked.

At the start of this unit, I barley knew any line techniques.  If I compared my first line technique drawing to my final project I defiantly have improved a lot.  My first line drawing has no line techniques, and no shape, tone and texture.  It was just terrible.  The second exercise we tested some line techniques.  I got much better with my line techniques, the practice helped me with my final project.  The next exercise was the drawing of the house, this was much better than my first line technique drawing, and showed the line techniques that I’ve learnt.  I did have to improve on my grass and not make it so perfect.  The final exercise before the final project was to chose a picture and draw it.  In this picture I liked my water.  The boats were incomplete, and very hard to see where one boat ends and where the other one begins.

I think that I could improve on my man, and the rocks.   My man didn’t have line techniques that signified that it was a person.  The cross-hatching that I did was bad, and could have been much improved. The cross-hatching was very awkwardly done, and did not demonstrate, the guy was a person. I think I could have used a different lien technique instead of cross-hatching as well, since the cross-hatching doesn’t show that the man is a person. The rocks that I drew looked very animated.  The line technique that I used for them was cross-hatching, some of the rocks do look okay, but overall the rocks look very animated. The shading for the rock, wasn’t as good as it could have been, and did not demonstrate the line techniques that I learnt.  I think the sand did demonstrate where it was darker on the picture, and looked like sand and not animated sand.

For my my favorite ‘ground’ was the trees and sky.  My trees look really detailed and look like actual trees, not animated one.  I did get help from Mr Curkovic with them, if i didn’t get help trees wouldn’t look as good.  Since he showed me the type of line technique that I should use, and how.  After he showed me how to draw scumbling, I got more confident in drawing it, and the trees turned out to be good.  For the sky I used the line technique stipple, I really like this line technique when doing the sky.  I think that it shows the sky in a good way and demonstrates how well I know the line technique.

Effective strategies for me, was practicing drawing the line technique on a different piece of paper first and then drawing it on to the proper paper.  When drawing the trees it helped a lot to practice drawing succumbing on paper and get a feel of how to draw it, and then draw it on the proper paper.  Unfortunately I did not use this strategy for drawing my person, therefor it didn’t turn out as good as I wanted it to.

I had a lot of fun during this unit and I learnt new line techniques that are really useful.  If I had to change something about my final project, I would change my person. I would use the strategy that I used on my trees and use it on my person, practice a lot more, and figure out the best lin techniques for the person.   I think that this was one of my best final art projects.

My final drawing                        The photo I used