Instructional PowerPoint for the Positive and Negative Space and the Plants of the Wildflower Wayside Shrine Trial Studio Lesson Plan By Karla Respress, Art Teacher Avon Park High School, Avon Park, FL

Introduction to the Assignment In this studio assignment you will learn: – how to design an artwork based on your drawings and photographs In this studio assignment you will gain experience in: – creating good compositions. – working with contour lines. – working with negative and positive spaces as a design element. – controlling art materials.

Step I: Gathering Reference Material On your visit to the Wildflower Wayside Shrine Trail you will need to obtain reference material for your studio assignment. When you return to the classroom, you will use your reference material to create three drawings of plants found on the trail. Your reference material may include: your sketches done in your sketchbook while on the trail, your drawings from ‘Trees in the Scrub Handout’ and ‘Leaves in the Scrub Download’ completed on the trail, and your photographs taken while on the trail. (You may wish to slide a piece of white paper behind the plant you are photographing to block out the background and see the contours of the plant better).

Step 2, 3, and 4: Composing the Design On the 10”x10” paper, use a ruler and a pencil to lightly draw 1/2 inch border around the edge of the paper. Next, lightly draw two vertical lines that divide the space evenly into three vertical sections, each section will measure 3”x9”. From your reference material on the trail, lightly draw a contour line of one of your plants in each section. ‘Stretch’ the image so that if fills the section and have the stems and leaves of the plant ‘touch’ the sides of the section whenever possible. Focus on good composition and quality of contour line. For additional reference material, you may look at the ‘The Plants’ section of the Wildflower Wayside Shrine Trail Website.

Step 5, 6, 7, and 8: Labeling the Positive and Negative Spaces You will now turn their contour line drawings into a design that emphasizes positive and negative space. In the first section, lightly label the negative space ‘b’ for black. In the second (middle) section lightly label the positive space ‘b’ for black. In the third section lightly label the negative space ‘b’ for black.

Step 9: Rendering the Design Now you are to use the illustration pens/tempera/India or sumi ink to fill in the spaces labeled ‘b’. – You may want to erase the ‘b’ as you cover the space so that there is no chance of it showing through. – Smaller more compact spaces should be filled in with the fine tipped pens/brushes and the larger pens/brushes used to fill in the larger spaces. – You may want to run pen/brush lines vertical or horizontal instead of in a circular motion. – Right hand students to render from the upper left to lower right of the paper and left hand students to work from the upper right to lower left of the to prevent smearing of the pen/ink.

Step 10: Clean-up After artwork is dry, look over the design and erase any visible pencil lines.