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Blackboard Sketching

Chapter 6: PLATE 3
By Frederick Whitney
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About This Book

The manual offers step-by-step instruction for making effective blackboard sketches using chalk and charcoal, beginning with basic strokes and progressing to complete classroom illustrations. Plates show stroke techniques and examples — simple shapes, objects, landscapes, seasonal and subject-based drawings — with explicit directions for pressure, angle, and chalk handling. Lessons explain how to adapt sketches for reading, arithmetic, geography, history, nature study, calendars, and holidays, and encourage teachers to practice strokes, vary touches, and adapt examples rather than copy them. Emphasis is placed on using sketching as a visual teaching aid to hold attention, clarify lessons, and lead children to use drawing as spontaneous expression.

Plate 3

PLATE 3

The lesson planned at illustration 3 is useful in a number of school lessons in the lower grades. I have seen it used in teaching reading in the first grade. In this case, some word from the lesson was written upon each apple, and the children were asked to see how many apples they could gather and put into the basket; in other words, to see how many words they could read. When a word was recognized, it was erased. Again, it has been successfully used in teaching number, form, etc. See also the ladder, plate 10.

Stroke 1 is made by placing the chalk upon the board in a vertical position and then drawing it across the board, varying the pressure frequently so as to give the effect seen in the basket. The strokes at 2 are produced in the same manner. Here the light spots in the stroke are alternated, coming beneath the dark spots in the stroke above. Try a number of these in the curving direction suggested at 2.

In making a sketch of a basket, draw lightly the elliptical top, then add as many strokes as are necessary to give the desired depth, and lastly add the handle. Strokes 3, and the ellipse below them, show the manner of producing this effect. Place the chalk horizontally at the top of the basket, decide where the handle should end at the opposite side, then draw upward with a heavy stroke, across the top lightly, then downward with a slight pressure. Keep the chalk in a horizontal position throughout the stroke. Add a line of accent to the nearest edge of the handle.

The tree trunk back of the basket is drawn with strokes 1 and 5, plate 2, the stroke being curved a bit at the lower end. The grass is added by the use of stroke 5, which is made by using a short piece of chalk, and by moving the hand rapidly up and down. A little accent may be used occasionally.

In drawing the apples study stroke 4. These are made like those on plate 2, by accenting with the end of the chalk. Use a very short curving stroke, first toward the left, then toward the right. Add stems, etc., with the point of the chalk.