LESSON PLANS SPRING TERM 2023. Lesson 2 - Mixed media, working on (top) of last week's drawings.

In this lesson I'm asking my students to work freely with mixed media on their last-week's drawings - working freely means mistakes will be made which need correcting. This is turn brings about a negotiated settlement, often between light and dark - the image is in flux, it takes time before it focusses and settles into its final state. Above I'm posting some lovely examples of negotiated settlements in mixed media.

Spring Term 2023 lesson 2 Still Life: Looking from all angles. Working with a mix of media from, or on the drawings done last session.

· Choose to set up your still-life again OR work directly from or on your drawings from last week (or do both).

· In this session you’re going to work with mixed media which can include collage, paint, colour and graphite pencils, pens, felt pens etc.

· I want to you have the feeling that you’re ‘throwing everything’ at this mixed media piece, and in fact you need to make some mistakes in order to have something to correct.

· Let’s say that you’re going to make some deliberate mistakes. This gives you the freedom to experiment boldly. Then some ‘corrections’ might be made by sticking a piece of plain paper over the ‘mistake’ and re-working it or by using acrylic or emulsion paint to correct.

· Decide whether you’ll start a whole new piece or work on (top) of your drawings from last week.

· If you start by adding paint to a drawing, ask yourself where the lightest places are and put the paint everywhere else so as to ‘reveal’ the lightest places – remember the motto ‘be stingy with your light places, they mean much more if you are’.

· Of course your paint may go too far and you’ll need to correct it with some white paint or pastel/chalk.

· The essence of this piece is that you really let go with it only to bring it into some order later on in the making of it.

Next lesson: We’re going to have one more go at this mad mixed media idea. You can work from or on previous drawings or set up a still-life and work from that. Bring your mix of media and your still-life.