a BALANCING act...

" If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens"

Grandma Moses

We started our classes today watching a 6 minute video on the Principle of Design, BALANCE.  It was on youtube and I was able to bring it up through my 3G telephone connection and use my projector to view it on the big screen.  Students took notes as the lesson involved seeing how balance is achieved with like and unlike shapes and sizes and how VISUAL BALANCE works when an object which is more interesting and draws out attention more strongly, is introduced to balance less interesting shapes.  The discussion that followed included talk about the various subjects the students have to choose from and that some are more intrinsically interesting than others because of varied line within the forms themselves.  For instance, the bones and the shoes are more interesting than the plain boxes.

I'm posting the "finished" example of the old shoe that I drew on the chalk board as I gave the demonstration on CONTOUR LINE drawing and how the students might try the "blind contour" in their practice on the small sheets of paper.  I mentioned that they can deliberately "slow themselves down" by switching their drawing instrument to the hand they are not used to drawing with resulting in even a more accurate representation of the subject.  A little "right" brain, "left" brain activity.

I try to use the chalkboard as little as possible, but in this case the students seemed to "get the picture"readily and I saw some apply the concept soon after.