Blog: Los Gatos Schools Draw With The Art Docents

"How to draw bodies in motion" taught by Art Docent Elizabeth Greer, assisted by Art Docent Diane Patterson, was a fun class to observe.

The third and fourth-grade students were actively engaged and visibly excited to learn.

Greer started by asking everyone to stand up to explore the different movements that were possible with the human body. The students experimented by bending and if possible rotating, different joints: shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles.

Greer then asked for a volunteer to pose for the class. The volunteer practiced Taekwondo, and took up a fighting stance. Greer drew a stick figure of the volunteer on the board, showing how the angles of the body gave a sense of movement.

The students were given pencils and paper, and Greer reminded the students how to hold a pencil in the “artist’s grip”.

Greer then asked for more volunteers, who were asked to pretend they were playing a volleyball game. She indicated the position of an invisible net, gave the students invisible balls, and asked them to pretend to play volley ball in slow motion, until she said “freeze.” When the volunteers had “frozen” in position, the other students were given fifteen seconds to sketch a stick figure of one of the volunteers. Greer held up some of the drawings and asked the students to identify the volunteer in the drawing—which they easily did.

Next the class was told they would be drawing bodies in motion from photographs. The students would do the first drawing using tracing paper to aid them, followed by a second drawing freehand.

Greer demonstrated to the class how to trace an image of the person, using a projected image of a baseball player on the board. First she drew an oval for the head, mentioning that it was important to get the correct angle of tilt. Then she drew circles for the shoulders, elbows and wrists. She explained that the shoulder, elbow and wrist circles should decrease in size, just as they do on the human body.

Greer then showed the students how to draw hips, and explained that the hip circles needed to be overlapping (or at least touching). She drew slightly smaller circles for the knees and ankles. Then she connected all the joints to form the outline of the body.

The class then repeated the exercise, but drew the figure freehand, using the drawing on the tracing paper as a reference.

After the students had finished, Greer held up some of the students’ work and asked the other students if they could identify the activity. The drawings were extremely good, and football players and dancers were easily recognizable.

Without the Art Docent program, students in would have limited exposure to the visual arts. Thank you to all the Art Docents who volunteer their time to enhance the education of our children!

Thank you to Greer and Patterson and teachers Ms. Adams and Ms. Young for allowing me to observe their third- and fourth-grade art lessons.