Design Your Own Shading Style

Hello again! Summer is over and we’re finally back into the swing of things! My Art 4 students, by this age, are often tired of the same old, same old shaded drawings so I’ve recently been challenging them to come up with a new way to shade.  If you google “scribble shading,” the variety of ideas that come forward are amazing.  

by Vince Low

I’m especially a fan of Malaysian artist, 
Vince Low and his celebrity portraits.

Here is a great video demonstration of what he does.

(And here is another inspiring video that could tie in with this project:  
Embrace the Shake!)

To get students warmed up, I asked them to design a few different “styles” of scribbling or mark making.  They could then choose whichever one worked best for their chosen photo.

The trickiest parts of this project were controlling the values (the buildup of marks takes patience) and getting the smallest details defined as best they could.  Sometimes, simplifications were in order.  

Students complained at first, but once they got the hang of it, they did well and the artworks were created surprisingly quickly!  Yeah for techniques that are easier than they appear!!

Happy Scribbling!