The Upside Down Man

Try looking at this picture upside down then drawing it 2 inches at a time. -That was what we did. It was really difficult at first but we learnt to concentrate on every line and not on what the entire picture would look like in the end. In the end, the drawing wasn't very proportional because I tried to draw what my mind was seeing, instead of drawing what my eyes were seeing. This was a challenging project and I have done it once before. It was interesting how the size and place of the lines can affect the entire picture. The original sketch was created by Pablo Picasso. I wonder why people often tend to draw this picture upside down instead of the right way up. Maybe the complex drawing make it difficult to draw it when your mind isn't concentrating on the lines.

Drawing Music

Drawing music was a very interesting concept for me. First, we took some time to listen to music while visualizing it using lines, shapes and different colors. Then, we did our best to sketch everything our mind saw while listening to the irish music. Everyone began drawing interesting lines and symbols, knowing that we weren't allowed to draw anything that looked like real objects.
The drawing on the right was created by Kandinsky many decades ago. He listened to the same music we did, while sketching it on paper. It was a brilliant idea and I was glad he was inspired to do it.

Shades of Green

Lime green
Navy green
Army green
Bright green
Dark green
Pale green
Emerald green
Turquoise green
Leafy green
Evergreen

Painting Trees

Our first step in this project was to sketch a tree. We chose a tree, then drew it using thick and thin lines using black markers. We sketched it again on a larger piece of paper and painted the background first, then the darker leaves, then painted over it using lighter shades of green to show depth.
I learnt that by showing different shades, we could make the tree look more realistic.
During this project, we could only paint with blue, green, black and white. This encouraged us to mix the four primary colors to form lots of other shades and colors ranging from navy green to lime green. We also had to learn how to blend the colors to form the shade of brown, used to color the trunk of the tree.
Artists, botanists and ecologists share a connection to this too. They also need the skill to see small details in plants and learn to notice how the different shades of their leaves differentiate them from each other.
The artist who inspired us to do this was Van Gogh. He also created many paintings of trees and plants, using different shades of green.