Drawing Activities
The start of the new semester has brought a strange start to the academic year. Same things needed to be taught but in a completely strange and different way.
New Covid19 regulations meant we had to split the cohort up into groups of 6 or less. Thanks to the numbers being 36, this was easy to do and we were also able to put them into groups designated for their accommodation as well, which really helped the situation.
Week 1 saw the students learning to draw perspective around the university Campus and from the top of the Flaxman Building. Teaching in smaller groups outside made the job really easy and fun. Luckily we also had the weather on our side as well!
Week 2
Nature Reserve
Once again forcing us to change our initial ideas, we looked at other places where the students could drawing with in the safety of our university campus. Who would have know that there was a Nature Reserve around the back of the Campus where the student accommodation is. The students didn't know, and to be honest, working here for 16 odd years, neither did I. The additional lesson on campus, enabled us to press home the group of 6 rule for students, so when they did leave the campus for the other drawing sessions this was more ingrained into their learning.
The great thing about the nature reserve is that, last week we had drawn buildings and man made environments and this week we were looking at natural landscapes
Stoke Minster and the Town Hall
This week saw the 1st Years leaviong the safety of the university campus and venturing down the road and into Stoke Town Centre. At Stokes Heart in the Minster which is directly across from the Town Hall. This time we were looking for Establishing shots. Earlier we had done a drone fly past of the minster to look at possible locations
Week 4
A walk along the Canal
Final, venturing further a field and to check the students abilities to read a map, we sent them out into the heart of Stoke-on-Trent to look and draw along the canal to the marina in Festival Park. The point here was to get them drawing and observing life along the canal which took them past the Etruria Industrial Museum.
