Sunflowers: scratchboard - Cover Story - teaching art - Brief Article

Scratchboard is a great vehicle for teaching drawing skills. It provides an alternate way for students to develop an understanding of working in values. Our subject for this lesson was sunflowers. Their large, clear shapes and distinct value contrasts make them easily comprehendible for our fifth-grade student artists.

We first looked at Vincent van Gogh's striking paintings of sunflowers. The students learned that flowers are prominent figures in van Gogh's oeuvre, and that he painted sunflowers a number of times. We observed the spatial aspect of one of his sunflower paintings that was, in part, derived from the varied positions of the flowers. We discussed the role of value contrasts, which make everything in the painting show up clearly.

Because their shapes are geometric in nature, sunflowers make good subject matter for young students. We were able to show the flower facing us directly, at an oblique angle, or viewed from behind, based on the shapes we observed. For example, when seen from the side, a sunflower's center presents itself as a tall oval, with petals all around and the foreground petals overlapping what is behind them.

We discussed the axle of the flower, as seen in the direction wherein the center oval tilts. In this way, we were able to note the gesture of the flower. We described the petals as basically oval in shape, though pointed at the tip. My elementary students have been trained to observe shapes, because once they can identify a shape (in a still life) they will know how to approach drawing it. Observing shapes, considering their size relative to the size of other objects around then, as well as placement of shapes, is an approach to developing perceptual skills that yields great confidence in student drawing. They are tangible, observable facts.

First, we drew sunflowers on the inked scratchboard with pencil. The pencil lines showed up sufficiently well on the black ink for us to continue the work with our wooden etching tools. We learned that "etch" means to scratch a line into a surface, which is precisely what we did to reveal the white paper beneath the top layer of ink. We were able to develop value distinctions according to how much ink we removed. Many fine lines etched close together produced light values, while fewer lines placed farther apart gave us darker tones like those found in the centers of the sunflowers.

Our students beamed with pride at the results of their efforts. You could hear the pride in the insightful comments they made during the critique held at the end of our hour-long class. When choosing someone's work to discuss, students made references to our objectives of observing shapes, their relative sizes and placement; drawing to the scale of the 5" x 8" scratchboard papers; and etching to develop the values.

These scratchboard sunflower drawings received accolades from our school community when they were displayed in the hallway. The scratch-board drawings were also chosen to represent Greenwood Elementary in the annual county school system's elementary and middle-school art show. The scratchboard sunflowers served as a fine demonstration of how well our youngsters can draw.

Susan Newman teaches art at Greenwood Elementary School in Brookeville, Maryland.

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COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group