Visiting Artists

While Ms. Buckley was on maternity leave, the middle school was taught by three visiting artists; Ms. Kastner, Ms. Ferera, and Ms. Pedulla. These artists demonstrated and taught different drawing techniques over the three weeks. Here are the reflections of several students on their learning during this time.

Livy- Ms. Kastner taught us about gesture drawings. Somebody would stand on the table in a pose and the other people would draw their position in two seconds. A skill I learned was how to draw tension in the person’s arms and legs. You do that by drawing thicker lines by the arms or legs. Ms. Kastner didn’t want us the worry if our drawings were perfect, she just wanted our drawings to show all the shadows and all the tension.

With Ms. Ferara, we drew skulls, flowers, and cloths. The materials that we used were chalk pastels. A skill that I learned from her was to use a light color for the outline and the dark color for the shadows. Also, that sometimes if you are feeling stuck, you can draw a little part of the object.

Skull, by AS

Dowel, by WP

Madalena - The last person who taught us in art class was Ms. Pedula. Ms. Pedula has many good ideas for arts and crafts, and she is a great artist. She taught us how to cross hatch and stipple. Cross hatching is when you draw an object, but when you shade, you use lines instead of just coloring in. You do a set of lines in one direction, then you do another set on top on them, facing a different direction.

by GR

Samuel- Ms. Kastner is an illustrator of children’s books, and she helps the sixth grade class each year with the art for memoir night. While Ms. Kastner was here, we did gesture drawings (in which we captured the essence of something, the tension, stress, etc.), and we did contour drawings (in which we didn’t lift a pen off our paper while we didn’t look at our page. We also did drawings with Ms. Kastner and Ms. Ferrara where we captured shadows, and colors, by finding the most prominent color or shadow, and exaggerating it.





Delaney- Ms. Ferrara was one of our art teachers over the past three weeks. She went to art school and is now an artist. Her work has been a part of some different art shows. She did a sample drawing for us which was interesting. Ms. Ferrara focused on space and color. When Ms. Ferrara was here we drew skulls, scarves, and flowers. She showed us how we could draw the negative space around the skulls so that we created the presence of a skull, but didn’t actually draw it. 

Skull by AC

Skull by LE

Esther- A skill that I will remember is stippling to shade. Stippling is using dots to show what you see. Ms. Pedula taught us this along with a lot of other shading skills. Ms. Pedula also taught us how to not worry about what the piece looks like in the beginning but how to focus on where the light is and isn't shining. Our class also learned how to imagine a light source and try to draw where it is shining. Along with this, we learned how to zoom in on parts of an object that interest us.
 

Vase, by JE

Jonas- Over the course of the three weeks, we used different types of drawing mediums including charcoal, pencil, and sharpie. It was interesting to be taught about the ways you can use darkness and light to create an image. What I mean is that sometimes you don’t really need to draw the actual object, you can just draw the space around it.

In terms of what we were drawing, we drew multiple different things. We did one activity where a student stood on a table and every 5 seconds they would move to a new gesture. In those five seconds, we had to draw the basic gesture of the person before they moved. The reason I enjoyed this activity is because you think in five seconds you wouldn’t be able to draw that much, but you begin to realize you can do a lot.