Video: Exploring shadows and tone

﻿Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Unit 1 of Drawing. This is lesson number three. I hope you're excited and ready for today's lesson. There's a lot to do. We might even be going outside later on in the lesson. So let's find out what you need. Let's go. As always, for today's lesson, you're going to need your sketchbook, if you have one. Otherwise, some plain sheets of A4 paper will be fine. You're going to need a pencil. Any colouring materials you have, that's completely up to you, what you would like to use today. And you're also going to need charcoal, if you have it. If you don't have charcoal, it's fine, it's not essential. And the same goes for masking tape. If you do have some masking tape, please pause now to go and get some, and press play when you're ready to carry on. Let's have a look at our plan for the next hour. Firstly, we're going to recap on what we did in the last lesson. So that was our lesson on why colour is important in art. Then we're going to have our warm-up drawing. Then we're going to be looking and going on a shadow hunt. So maybe around your house or the building you're in, and outside if you're allowed to, going to go on a shadow hunt. After that, we're going to be exploring how to create light and dark tones using the materials, so the drawing resources that you have with you today. And finally, we're going to reflect, and reflect means to deeply think carefully about something. So we're going to think about our learning and consider some other activities we can do after today around shadows. So recapping on last lesson, our lesson on why colour is so important in art, I want you to look at the two pictures on your screen right now. I've got two self-portraits, one of them you might remember from last lesson. Your question is, can you point to the drawing which might be using colour to show anger? So point now with your finger which picture has used colour to show the emotion anger. Did you click this one? Well done. We can see lots of dark colours, like black, and we also got those reds, some oranges, so colours around red. And do you remember last lesson I said that red represents a lot of anger sometimes? Okay, one more recap question of our last lesson. What is another word for colour? Can you remember it? So the other fancy word that we can sometimes use in art when we're talking about all the different shades of colours, can you remember? Did you say hue? Well done. If you didn't, it's fine. We don't need to know it off by heart just yet, but the word is hue. And now for our Star Words. Now remember, Star Words are words that we might hear throughout the lesson. I'll say it first, and when I put my hand like this, then it's your turn to say it, okay? First one, tone. Great, and tone is a word you might not have heard before, and it's a word we use in art when we're talking about how light or how dark a colour is. So we're going to say that one more time just so you remember that word tone. Tone. Fantastic. Next one, shadow. Lighter. Darker. Fantastic work. It's now time for our drawing warm-up. Now remember, this is just a little activity we do to get ourselves warmed up and ready for whatever we do next, so don't spend too long on it. It needs to be quick, okay? Our drawing warm-up today is a blindfolded drawing. That means you need to stop the video any second now and go and find something to blindfold your eyes. You might need an adult or a friend to help you do this. And it can be a scarf, a tea towel, any long piece of material you have. Then you're going to have a piece of paper and a pencil and I'd like you to draw a house. It can be your house or anybody's house, but you cannot see what you're drawing. Don't forget the roof, the windows, the doors. Make it quick and make sure you don't peep, okay? Have fun. Press pause now, and press play when you've completed your drawing. I'm going to assume that you've pressed play because you've finished your drawing warm-up and you should have quite a wacky picture of a house in front of you. Our big question for today. Have you ever chased your own shadow? You have? Maybe you have done it in a playground or a field. We've all done it, haven't we? And our shadow never really escapes us. It's always there as long as there is always a light. So our big topic for today is shadows. But where can we find shadows? Well, when we look for them, we can see shadows everywhere, can't we? We can see shadows in the kitchen, like in that first photo. We can see them outside, shadows of cars and bikes. We can see them in the forest when we see trees and bushes. And if we're really high up or can see lots of field, then you might even see shadows of clouds. Here are some shadows I found in my house. Can you have a look at the last photo and guess what that might be a shadow of? Can you tell me now? Did you guess a window? You're correct. That is a shadow of my window. This moves us onto our next big activity for today's lesson, which is a shadow hunt. That's right, you've got two minutes in just the moment when you pause, you can time it if you have a timer or maybe an adult does to see how many shadows you can find that will be either in your house or the building you're in or if you're allowed outside, you can maybe go outside too, but you only have two minutes and you must count to see how many shadows you can find. Are you ready? Off you go. Are you back from your shadow hunt now? Great. How many shadows did you find? Can you tell me? Wow, impressive stuff. Great job in your shadow hunt today. Now there's a second part to that activity. Are you ready to hear what the second part is? Super. The second part of your shadow hunt activity means you are going to choose two or three of your most favourite shadows that you saw on your hunt and you're going to use your colouring materials and a piece of paper to draw around them. So trace around the outline just like I've done in this photo on the screen now. You can see that in my picture, it looks like it's on the wall, and I've used a bit of masking tape. So remember, at the beginning of the lesson, I said you can use masking tape. So if you have a shadow that is maybe on the wall and you'd like to draw it, then you might need masking tape if you have it. Now remember, we don't want to get any colouring materials or any drawing on walls or floors today, so make sure you only go a few centimetres from the edges of your paper. Don't go too close to the edge. We don't want any upset adults. Pause the video now to start your task and press play when you're finished and you're ready to carry on. Okay, you should have finished your shadow drawings by now. And I wanted to ask you, was one of your shadows harder to draw than another one? Maybe it was a lot lighter and you couldn't see the edge of the shadow. Did you find that? And was there a shadow that was much easier to draw around, maybe it was really dark so you could see the edge really clearly? I know I found that with my shadow drawings. For the next part of the lesson, I want to talk about tone, and tone is a word, another fancy word we use in art, when we're talking about how dark a colour or a shade of a colour is. And if we look at the shadow in this picture, is it completely black? 'Cause we often think shadows are just black, but is the shadow black? Have a look. It's not, is it? You can see above it that I've drawn two, or I've tried to colour in two shadows of the drawing around the shadow. And the middle one, I've used the black, and it doesn't really look anything like the actual shadow, does it? And so the top one, I thought about, well, what tone of colour is the shadow really? Is it black or is it a much lighter tone? So I decided I couldn't use a pen, and actually, I tried using a pencil. Do you think it looks better? I think it looks much better. For your final activity, you're going to be experimenting and exploring tone by yourself. So with all the black and grey drawing materials you have at home with you, and it might be charcoal, pens, pencil, oil pastel, or chalk, whatever grey and black drawing materials you have, you're going to be testing them out on your plain piece of paper. Try pushing harder and lighter with your hands on the paper for each one to see if you get a lighter or darker tone. And you can also try using your finger to smudge some of the pencil, chalk, or charcoal to see if you get a different outcome. Pause now to start your activity, and press play when you're ready to carry on the video. Okay, I'm going to assume that by now you have finished testing out your drawing materials, and you have a page in front of you with lots of light and dark tones. Can you, with your finger, have a look on your page and point to me the darkest tone? The darkest tone. And now can you point to me the lightest? So find the lightest tone you've made. Fantastic. Okay, before we finish our lesson for today, I'm going to ask you two recap questions. Are you ready? Super. Let's get started. Looking at these two pictures on the screen, which colouring tool gave me the darker tone? So I've used a pencil where there is a green border and I've used oil pastel where there is a purple border. Can you point now to which colouring tool you think gave me the darker tone? Was it the pencil or the oil pastel? Did you say the oil pastel? Well done. And for our second question, I have two pictures where I have drawn using the same drawing material. I have used oil pastel for both of these. And the question is, in which picture do you think I have pushed harder with my oil pastel? So think back to when you were making your marks. Which one do you think I was pushing harder with? Was it the green or the purple? Did you point to the green? Well done. I was pushing much harder here, and you can tell because it's given me a darker tone. When I push harder with pencil or oil pastel, we can often get darker tones. And I want to finish off today's lesson by saying there are so many more things you can do with shadows and drawing. If you wanted to do some more shadow drawings after today's lesson, you could always create your own shadows to draw around, so using blocks or toys or other objects around your house. You could build your own statue and see what shadows you can create. You can draw around them, colour them in, overlap them, or you could even draw around them at different times of the day to see how the shadow changes. And you can always take your shadow drawings one step further with some big chalk. Go outside, see what big shadows you can find in a playground. Draw around them and see what shapes they make. Have fun, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Lesson summary: Exploring shadows and tone

In this lesson, we will be hunting for shadows and exploring the different ways we can use shadows to inspire our drawings. Later on in the lesson, we will begin to discuss 'tone' and experiment with a range of drawing materials to understand a bit more about this term. This lesson includes some physical activity and equipment beyond pen, paper or pencil. Please make sure your child is adequately supervised.

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Exploring shadows and tone

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Lesson summary: Exploring shadows and tone

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