The “Drawing and Poetry” In the Studio event explores connections between drawing and the written word.

Drawing can often take place in an observational context, where we draw what we see in front of us. In this session, we will use a poem as a starting point, and explore ways to really see it, and to draw the imagery and feelings it evokes.

The aim is to provide exciting starting points to explore a more fluid and experimental approach to drawing.

Find the recording of the session below.

Explore resources connecting drawing and poetry:

found poetry

poetry comics

poetry and printing

puzzle purses

imagery and poetry

illustrating the jabberwocky

set design – responding to text

To coincide with The Human Touch, an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, AccessArt has collated a collection of resources to help pupils and teachers explore the sense of touch in making art. 

The exhibition explore how we use our hands to leave traces, make art and symbolise emotion and intention. The resources below can be used as starting points to explore ideas about our sense of touch in the classroom or studio.

Drawing & Mark Making

Making “Feely” Drawings

See the Resource

Nest

See the Resource

Doodle Ball

See the Resource

Drawing Like a Caveman

See the Resource

Painting with Plasticine

See the Resource

Hands, Feet, Flowers

See the Resource

Clay

Quick Clay Sketches

See the Resource

Sensing Form

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Making Mini Food

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Painted Clay

See the Resource

Fruit Pinch Pot

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Beyond Clay

Hand Casts

See the Resource

Worry Dolls

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Paper Bowls

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Wave Bowls

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The “Drawing and Performance” In the Studio event explores connections between drawing and movement. 

Drawing is often seen as a passive activity which takes place whilst we are seated; a process of making marks with a pencil whilst moving from the wrist. 

But drawing CAN be a much more physical activity – an activity which involves making marks on a much larger scale with materials other than pencils to create artwork which we approach with our whole body, and verges on performance both in terms of how drawings are made and how they are viewed.

Drawing can also of course be inspired BY performance itself – dance, film, theatre and tv can all provide exciting starting points to explore a more fluid and experimental approach to drawing. 

Find the recording of the session below.

Drawing dancers by Tobi Meuwissen

Choose stills from the video above, drawing them in panels (rectangles), to create a sequence of drawings

Draw as you watch the above video, making marks on the paper and layering image over image. Take what you need form the video, leave out what you don’t need. 

drawing in the dark

using a tablet

impressability project

dressing up as a fossil

Tape, projectors, wicki sticks

drawing with tape on walls

shadow puppets

shadow puppets and whiteboards

drawing with tape on walls

painting the storm

missing you

Drawing in space

Drawing dancers by Tobi Meuwissen

The AccessArt Prompt Cards are a series of very short drawing prompts which can be used in a wide variety of situations. You can download the prompts below as a PDF.

Find the recording of the In The Studio session focusing on AccessArt’s Prompt Cards below.

DOWNLOAD THE ACCESSART PROMPT CARDS PDF

Using the Drawing Prompts as a Warm Up

The Drawing Prompts are a great way to help learners be open about what drawing is and how they make marks on a page. 

Before you work with the drawing cards, consider enabling learners to understand how they hold a pencil, how much pressure they apply, and how they move their arm will effect the marks they make. See Anatomy of a Pencil resource here. 

moving and drawing

teenagers make their own prompt cards

Anatomy of a pencil

Using the Drawing Prompts as an Aid to Well Being

The resources below share how you might use the Drawing Prompts to help learners develop their appreciation of drawing in the “now” – a useful skill to help build a sense of well being.

drawing as a tool for mindfulness

arts and minds

Using the Drawing Prompts as an Aid to Exploring

In the resource below, the AccessArt Drawing prompts were used as a way to help teachers (or learners of any age) explore artwork made by others (in this case an exhibition of the work by Degas at the Fitzwilliam Museum). The drawing prompts help learners collect information in a visual way and help make an individual creative resource.

Drawing in a museum or gallery

Last week we looked at how we can use sound to help develop our mark making in a very intuitive way. Today we are going to look at how we can develop our mark making skills in a slightly more analytical way – through examining the work of other artists. By doing this, and by using our new mark-making vocabulary in the drawings we make, we can begin to understand how different types of marks create personality and meaning in our drawings.

As with all the AccessArt resources, we want to help learners aim high, but through a series of small steps. And at each of the steps we ensure we are encouraging open-ended, creative experiences so that the learning is really owned by the learner.

Find the recording of the In The Studio session exploring diverse mark-making below.

Activities which help learners identify new marks…

Finding marks through artists

thoughtful mark making

drawing clouds and mark making

Typography for children

Monoprint with Oil Pastel

Flat Yet Sculptural making

Making Sculptural Wild Things

What is the connection between sound and mark making, and how can we use one to enable an exploration in the other?

At it’s most essential, drawing is the result of our bodies moving while we hold some kind of drawing tool. How we move while we draw (how fast, how slow, how carefully, how chaotically) is not something we often consider – we are usually too busy looking at our drawing on the page.

The sounds around us mark and describe the passing of time: birdsong, traffic, machinery, speech, music. Each sound reverberates through our body, and we react, at some level, to everything we hear.
Sound is energy, and our bodies respond with movement – sometimes on a micro scale (a tap of a finger) sometimes through the whole body (we dance).

How can sound become a gesture on the page? The exercises and resources below explore how we can use sound to create energy, rhythm and movement which transform through our body and through the drawing material into mark making on the page.

Find the recording of the Zoom session exploring sound and movement below.

Although not made in response to sound, the work of Japanese artist Tomoko Kawao shows how drawing relies on movement of the body in response to a stimulus. Even when we draw from the wrist with a fine drawing material, the movements we make, the pressure we apply, and our empathy with the material, dictates the marks we make.

mark making and sound

Painting the storm

Drawing to a metronome

Drawing in the dark

Inspired by Miro

a cheerful orchestra

Sketchbooks and Performance