Creative Arts

How to use basic materials and tools for drawing and painting

In Primary One, Two and Three, you were used to holding a pencil and writing letters, words and sentences in your book. It is good you know how to write. In the same way, you can hold a pencil to draw a picture on paper. It is that simple, begin by holding your pencil freely and comfortably. Look at how a child freely holds a pencil as he draws on a paper in Figure 3. Now you are ready to draw a picture of your choice.

I hope you were able to observe that the lines produced with a sharpened pencil look smarter. For such materials like pencils and crayons, they need to be sharpened with a cutter or sharpener in order to work properly. You can only get clear lines by using sharpened pencils. Such lines and dots help us a lot when we are drawing the different shapes of objects. They often provide us with the starting point in drawing and painting.

How to draw and paint basic shapes of objects (still life)

Look around you. What objects can you see? How do they look like?

What shapes can you see? What colours can you see? Well, such objects can be shown on paper by using materials for drawing and painting. Do you observe that the objects from your classroom have simple shapes such as rectangles and squares? What about triangles and circles?

I hope you have seen similar shapes in Mathematics. How are they called? They are called geometric shapes . Many manmade objects bare such simple shapes. Shapes appear in different sizes; very small, small, medium, big and very big. Using different lines, you can draw the shape of a given object. Work out activity 6.

Practical Activity 7

Drawing and painting natural objects

1. Visit your environment and pick a natural object (such as a plant, a flower, a leaf, an insect, or a fruit). Also use other objects which can be possible to be picked.

2. Using a pencil, draw the object on paper. Make sure it is big enough depending on the size of paper.

3. Paint the object using attractive colours.

You have just drawn objects from nature. These are called natural objects

and they have got natural shapes. Keep your work safely for discussion later on.

Take note: Some of the natural objects you could draw and paint from imagination.

Drawing and painting compositions from our surroundings (Nature 2)

We can also draw and paint objects from our surroundings to form a composition. Our surroundings have many objects. But to make an interesting drawing, you pick on a few and leave out the rest.

For example, the pictures shown in Figure 8 were drawn and painted by primary school pupils, showing compositions from their surrounding. Look at how the pupils selected a few objects to make up their pictures. Identify these objects and the colours that were used in the pictures.

Drawing often includes the use of dry materials such as pencils, charcoal, pens, pastels and sometimes ink. In painting we often use brushes and liquid paint.

Figure 9: Arrangement of pupils’ works on the wall

For example the picture above shows how pupils’ drawings and paintings were displayed on the wall. How were the different works displayed to look attractive?

I hope you can observe that the following aspects were followed to make the work look organised and attractive:

􀿤 Works follow vertical lines.

􀿤 There are equal spaces left between each work.

Now try to talk about the style of your work and that of your friends as you go through activity 9.