Inbal Leitner is a professional Illustrator with over 20 years’ experience working within the Illustration and Animation industry. After working on many editorial illustration, and animation projects, Inbal specialised in Children’s Book Illustration and completed a Masters at Cambridge School of Art in 2018. In this resource Inbal demonstrates how poems can be translated into imagery using just shape and line.
Let’s explore a poem!
It can be the poem you’ve just heard about in the video, or ANY other poem!
If you’d like to work with “Growing up” by Harry Behn, here it is:
Growing Up by Harry Behn
When I was seven
We went for a picnic
up to a magic
Foresty place.
I knew there were tigers
behind every boulder,
though I didn’t meet one face to face.
When I was older
we went for a picnic
up to the very same
place as before,
and all of the trees
and the rocks were so little
They couldn’t hide tigers
Or me anymore.
To Begin
Start by drawing different lines using pencils, pens, paints or any other materials. Create thin and thick lines, straight and quirky lines, and strong and faint lines.
Explore Shapes Too!
Using paint or pre-painted pieces of paper, see what happens when you create:
-
Big and small shapes.
-
Neat and rough shapes.
-
Simple and complex shapes.
Experiment with sticking shapes on top of each other!
Develop your shapes by combining lines and shapes together – do you get any interesting combinations?
Creating a Background and Characters
You may want to paint whole pages or parts of the pages in your sketchbook, this can be used as a background or as a foundation layer to draw on. It can help you create the atmosphere, the feeling of the poem.
What colour would you use for a fun atmosphere? How about mysterious? Or a scary feeling?
You might want to think of objects that appear in the poem.
Try and create the same object using lines only, shapes only and a combination of lines and shapes.
Use different materials to draw the same object, did you get any interesting combinations? Can you combine objects drawn using line with objects drawn using shapes?
You can also create the objects outside the sketchbook, by cutting or ripping pieces of paper or card. This way you can play with the organisation of the different shapes on the page.
Your sketchbook is like a little poem dictionary, where you draw and give life to objects.
With special thanks to Peter & Ben Behn, and Heather Heddon for giving their permission for AccessArt to use ‘Growing Up’ by Harry Behn.
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A collection of imagery and sources which you can use to prompt drawing in schools and community groups.
Please note that this page contains links to external websites and has videos from external websites embedded. At the time of creating, AccessArt checked all links to ensure content is appropriate for teachers to access. However external websites and videos are updated and that is beyond our control.
Please let us know if you find a 404 link, or if you feel content is no longer appropriate.
We strongly recommend as part of good teaching practice that teachers watch all videos and visit all websites before sharing with a class. On occasion there may be elements of a video you would prefer not to show to your class and it is the teacher’s responsibility to ensure content is appropriate. Many thanks.
Nests
Use the film below to enable children to explore drawing nests. Try to create a sense of momentum – for example you might pause the video 4 times and ask the pupils to make a 1 minute, 2 minute, 3 minute and 4 minute drawing at each pause.
Encourage close and slow looking by talking as they draw – use your voice to attract their attention to qualities of the nest.
Try the same exercise using different materials, ie handwriting pen, ink and nib, pastel, watercolour…
Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, Davis, United States. Original public domain image from Wikimedia Commons
Bird nest hanging on a tree. Free public domain CC0 photo.
Birds nest in tree, nature photography. Free public domain CC0 image.
Birds nest in tree, nature photography. Free public domain CC0 image.
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A collection of imagery and sources which you can use to prompt drawing in schools and community groups.
Please note that this page contains links to external websites and has videos from external websites embedded. At the time of creating, AccessArt checked all links to ensure content is appropriate for teachers to access. However external websites and videos are updated and that is beyond our control.
Please let us know if you find a 404 link, or if you feel content is no longer appropriate.
We strongly recommend as part of good teaching practice that teachers watch all videos and visit all websites before sharing with a class. On occasion there may be elements of a video you would prefer not to show to your class and it is the teacher’s responsibility to ensure content is appropriate. Many thanks.
This resource is free to access and is not a part of AccessArt membership.
Drone Footage Over Natural Landscape
Use the film below as source material to enable an exploration of drawing natural landscapes. You can also try to find drone footage of your own environment, or that of areas relating to projects you are covering in school.
Pause the footage at points which catch your eye and invite the children to make timed drawings – 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 2 minutes or 1 minute.
Vary the drawing materials you use and work in sketchbooks or sheets of paper of different sizes and textures. You may also like to make multiple line drawings over one page – each with a different colour or line weight, to describe different pause points in the same film to capture a moving landscape.
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