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Experimental Drawing Lesson - Large-scale Drawing of Small Objects

Drawing Problem 1

3 Quick blow-up drawings:
Working from a small but complex object, create 3 contour line drawings as a warm-up and to familiarize yourself with the object and the scale it needs to be drawn at to fill the page.

 

Materials: charcoal, 18 x 24 newsprint paper.
 

 

Drawing Problem 2
 

Now that you have familiarized yourself with the object, you can now do a new drawing of the small object in more detail at monumental scale. Working from the same object, create a drawing in the following way: Create a middle value ground by covering your paper with charcoal, blending it to a flat even middle tone with a chamois cloth and then, "pulling out" the lights with your gum eraser and "pushing back" the darks with your compressed charcoal. This drawing is to fill the page and even go beyond the edges.
 

Materials: charcoal, compressed charcoal, chamois cloth, gum eraser, 18 x 24 quality drawing paper.

 

Drawing Problem 3

The next drawing should be a blow-up/monumental scale drawing working from the same object to create a drawing in the following way: Using the middle value gray drawing paper, "pull out" the lights with your white crayon and "push back" the darks with black crayon. This drawing is to fill the page and even go beyond the edges.

 

Materials:  Black, white, gray Conte crayons, pink eraser, eraser stick, 18 x 24 gray drawing paper.

 

Example of large-scale drawing from a small object for this lesson.

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Pop Corn Drawing 01    18 x 24    Conte Crayons    by Edward Burke

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Pop Corn Drawing 01    18 x 24    Conte Crayons    by Edward Burke

Examples of students' large scale / monumental object drawings

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Chris Meyer

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Alyssa O’Grady

Examples of artists' large-scale and monumental object drawings

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Jo Cook and James Whitman collaborative drawing
A sample of the over 100 collaborative drawings exhibited by Jo Cook and James Whitman at “Access Artist Run Center” in Vancouver, Canada in 2003

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Penelope Dullaghan, Tissue Drawin

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Claes Oldenburg, Floating Three-Way Plug, 1976

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