Drawing Skills

These are some ideas for teaching drawing skills. I'd recommend this from 4th class upwards as this is the age children start to move away from just using art equipment freely and want to learn some skills. I think these lessons keep it fun and interesting!

This book is really helpful for drawing skills ideas.

Drawing Upside Down

This is just a sketch of a tree from a photograph that I did. You could give the children a simple picture, upside down, and they draw it upside down.

Drawing the Four Angles

Turn the object, and draw it from a new angle in a different colour. The final one can be tricky!

Drawing in String

Creating the drawing in string. This was a self-portrait. It enables children to see the contours.

Experiment with a Variety of Materials.

Give the children freedom to experiment with different pencils, charcoal, chalk and oil pastels.

Negative Spaces

Children look at the space in between objects- not the object (this is tricky!) This exercise also encourages the children to use the right hand side of their brain, the creative side. 

This is explained in this book (another favourite!)