A Strategy to Raise Achievement in Art

This strategy is for GCSE students who struggle to work independently or for those teachers who have enormous mixed ability classes where it is impossible to support a them in a truly independent course of study. You may have behavioural issues and difficulty in encouraging students to complete homework.

This simple strategy asks students to create a line pen drawing, and then you print it out multiple times onto different papers, and they work into it with different media. It is that simple, but as you will see from the images below, it can achieve great results and really supports lower-ability students.

It ticks lots of boxes, as it is both recording and experimenting with different media and surfaces. I see it as a skill-building exercise at the start of a project after which work becomes more independent and diverse.

Unique Outcomes

What I like about this strategy is that all the work can still be unique as each student selects their own image. You can give them a choice of media and techniques too, or demonstrate each technique at the start of the lesson depending on the independence and ability of your class.

You need to be really fussy about the pen drawing. The work is only going to be as good as the original pen drawing, so you have to have the confidence to ask students to improve it or even to do it again. I make it clear at the start that it has to be really good and explain why.

It helps if you direct your students to create sections to work within, like the example above. They start by using transfer paper or using a lightbox to trace the image in pencil. They then go over it in pen, and then add quality of line. The example above is done with ballpoint pen but it could be done in fineliner if you prefer. When students are adding the quality of line, I tell students to forget about the original drawing and work more thickly into the corners.

There are so many things you could do with this next! All the images below are the same line drawing worked into in different ways.

Below the student was directed to work with watercolour and use three harmonious colours. They were shown how to gradate the paint from dark, to medium to light.

The examples below use warm colouring pencils on white paper and then cool colouring pencils on a warm sugar paper background.

Btw, sugar paper is called sugar paper because it used to be used to wrap sugar. Disappointingly, it doesn’t have any sugar in it.

The coloured pencils have been gradated. My mantra when teaching this is ‘Press hard, press medium, press lightly!’ (Ok, ok, I know it would be better English to say ‘press with medium pressure’ but having had the demo, my students know what I mean!)

You can get your students to create their own surfaces too. The paper below left was wetted and then daubed with instant coffee. Once dry, the line drawing was printed onto it and then the student worked with cross-hatching using ballpoint pen.

You could make other interesting surfaces with inks, watercolour and brusho. Better still, plan a lesson of making surfaces where your students have choice.

Creative Surfaces

Another technique your students could try is stippling (above right). This is hugely satisfying and really appeals to some students. You might want to invest in a dot pen #Ad. My department has one and students love it, and it speeds up stippling no end.

The image below uses one of my favourite mediums: Black Quink ink. To achieve this effect, wet an area with clean water and dab on the Quink ink. Only use a small amount of the ink as it is very strong. Allow the ink to bleed into the water. Don’t be tempted to poke it or smooth it with the brush once you’ve applied the ink. Let it bleed into the water and do its own thing. As it bleeds the colours within the black ink separate revealing blues and yellow/brown.

You can see below how effective this collection of artwork can look when presented in a sketchbook with annotation. You can click on the image below to see it larger.

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