Senior House children have enjoyed art lessons in the open air during their first full week back in school. The children have made the most of the warm weather and covered outdoor space to work on figurative continuous line drawings. Working with large-scale paper, the children drew portraits of one of their peers who posed for the group.
At first, the children were encouraged to try a 'blind' continuous line drawing where they only looked at the subject matter. These drawings help children to focus on observation skills and get them used to matching speed of mark-making with speed of observation. One Form 3 pupil commented, "Our drawings had a sense of freedom and being forced to only look at the person we were drawing made us worry less about the actual marks we were making and instead look at the shapes we could see." Another Form 5 child explained, "I found this a positive exercise as it stops you from thinking about how 'good' an artist you are and it takes away any preconceptions."
Continuous line drawings provide an excellent way to help children develop hand-eye coordination. They are made by keeping the pencil in contact with the paper for the duration of the exercise. This exercise helps children to focus more on observational skills and improve their coordination to translate what they see directly.
