Figure Drawing Larger Than Life

We enjoyed figure drawing so much last week that I thought it would be fun to try a different approach to this wonderful activity.  My husband is a middle school art teacher and he was saying that when he teaches figure drawing, he projects on the wall  while he gives his demo. This way his students get a better idea of how to do a quick gesture drawing.   It inspired me to have the children do their figure drawing on the light projector while their friend posed in front of the curtain, and others drew on their drawing boards.

I placed a piece of plastic covering over the projector and the children used dry-erase markers for their drawings.  It was intriguing to see the process because the children using the light projector had to adjust to the fact that the image reverses itself when it is projected.

It was a lot happening at one time; the children were observing their friends modeling, the models were enjoying posing, but also seeing their shadows projected, and they were drawing the model as well as watching someone draw next to the model larger than life.  At first it seemed like too much was happening at one time, but then as I observed the children, they were so focused on what they were doing that what seemed like too much to take in, really was captivating the children, especially the four and five year olds.  

Friends looking on as they watch 

their artist friend at work

Things began to get even more interesting as props were added to the projector 

to create a scene in which the model was sitting or standing.

This model decided to be a person flying through space.

Three different perspective of a pose;  The model posing, the drawing being created by the artist at the light projector, and a finished drawing of the model and objects being projected from the light projector.