Category: art

Doodle Battle: Fight for the Whiteboard

On By Brent SchmidtIn art, Musings, Reflections1 Comment

As with most things in our classroom, it started with a story.

In our Classroom Story, “Carta Marina”, we had a portion called Dungeon Dash where students’ characters were navigating a dungeon looking for monsters, loot, and keys. One group encountered a Slime, the most basic, weak, and ubiquitous of the Fantasy Role-Playing Game enemies/monsters.

Below is the first page of a comic about the events one group experienced…and the advent of JERRY the Slime.
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Then, one October day, Jerry found a spot on our whiteboard (he didn’t start with the Santa hat). I’ve always let students draw and doodle on a certain part of our whiteboard, but one day in December, Mr.Wichenko (teaching candidate), noticed the students started taking liberalities with the space given.  Their doodles were encroaching on our valuable whiteboard space so he asks, “when do I start erasing stuff and taking our spot back?”

I figured it was time to take it back to the students. What is the nemesis of slime?

SALT

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Salt throwers. Army of salt men. Puddles of slime. Saltinerator. THE DOODLE BATTLE WAS ON.

We had a couple rules though. 1. No erasing other peoples stuff. 2. Doodles had to somehow relate to the battle.

Here’s my quick-notes on why this experience was awesome.

  • students planning and working together
  • student and staff interaction
  • drawing!
  • students laughing
  • teachers laughing
  • making something
  • seeing all the little things appear on the whiteboard from class to class
  • seeing how the drawings would evolve and interact

Personally, my favourite part was when I drew a spy amongst the slimes. It was just a bunch of salt people in a suit.

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When the students eventually found it amongst the other doodles, they quickly acted.

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And then sent their own unit into deep cover.

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Over the course of a week the whiteboard became a living art installation in the room, constantly changing and expanding. We had our fun, and on the last day before Winter Break, the doodlers all got together and erased everything…except Jerry.

Oh, and here was our “finished product”.

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Drawing Once Again!

On By Brent SchmidtIn art, ReflectionsLeave a comment

I used to draw. Then I was a recovering drawer. And after participating in Inktober, I realized I am a drawer once again.

Inktober was an initiative started by artist Jake Parker. The challenge is to do a pen and ink drawing every day for the month of October and is meant to “to improve inking skills and develop positive drawing habits”. It certainly did that for me. I don’t want this to be long, so here’s my notes:

  • roughly 30 minutes a day. some days much more, some days less, or none.
  • definitely felt like I got better. steadier hand, smoother lines, better understanding of composition, shadows, textures, perspectives, and more.
  • sometimes I would copy a picture, sometime I would make up an original.
  • some drawings felt very deliberate and others we more like doodles.
  • I learned about different pens and techniques.
  • brush pens are fun.
  • I will be visiting Artist’s Emporium soon to purchase more pens that I would like to add to my kit.

I will continue to draw, doodle, copy, and colour. It feels good to put stuff on paper and look back on it.  I love keeping notebooks, so drawing is just another cool thing I can add to them.

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