College One: Challenging the way students could work - through music...

As I want to challenge the way students approach drawing, I wanted to experiment with something I was shown in Foundation (previously mentioned in other posts), drawing with music. Drawing with music not only challenges the drawing through time-management but it also loosens up their drawing skills by how fast or slow the music is going. Depending on the speed of music the mark-makings differ, this adds depth, highlights and shading to the results but also emotion that comes from the music.

As I am just using found still-life objects from around my home, I decided to use different variations of glasses as they hold shape, reflection and light.

I started off by drawing to familiar music with lyrics but it did not work, because I knew the music I become to focused on singing the lyrics whilst I should of been focusing on applying the music to my drawing. Because of this I decided to still use familiar songs but find instrumental versions of them, it then became all about the beat, speed and rhythm of the song, all which could be applied whilst drawing.

The first song I did a sketch to was called Charlie Brown by Coldplay, it was 4:47 minutes long and I used Charcoal as my chosen media. I found the song to be too long, even though the finished result does not look great, the whole point of these quick exercises is that they are quick, this just seemed to last forever. I also found using Charcoal gave me little room for small detail as well as shading, it was a thick and dark media.

Because the media was too thick before, I decided to go for a thinner, more linear approach by using an ink pen in blue. This drawing was made alongside the same song as above but it looks far more energetic and realistic. I put this down to the media choice. The proportions and perspective needs improving but I think this media choice works for drawing with music, more energy and enthusiasm needs to be brought to produce better quality work, to do this the song choice needs to be reconsidered.

To produce more energetic drawings, I decided to choose a more energetic song. This drawing was done alongside Tinie Tempah and Calvin Harris' song titled 'Drinking from the Bottle' also the instrumental version. The outcome is more energetic but it is also unfinished, I decided to stick using the same media as it worked so well but changed the colour of it. Is 2 objects too much to focus on during these quick drawing experiments?

I choose to change the song again to gain variety, this time I draw to Flo Rida-Wild Ones Instrumental. I found to have finished what I thought seemed enough before the song had even ended, how would I fill a certain time slot? Go bigger (paper size)? Use bigger or thinner media? Continue working on the drawing even though it is being over worked? Add more objects? These are the questions the Secondary students will have to consider when taking part in these exercises, they have to challenge themselves in order for their work to improve.