Art Centers: Drawing

Each year the Virginia Art Education Association conference pumps me up (even more than I already am) about what I have dedicated my life to.  I love going and taking in all of the great ideas that are shared there between art educators.  There are so many, it takes a while to go through my notes and think about what I want to implement in my own art room.

One thing that really stuck out to me was a session I attended that discussed using art centers in the art room.  The benefits of art centers are that students are self-directed and free to explore art materials and processes.  Today I set up drawing art centers for students.

We had two observational drawing centers.  One was a still life center where students could set up their own still lifes and draw them.  The other was a portraiture center where students could look in a mirror and draw a self-portrait or work with the person across from them and draw them.

The other five centers were using how to draw books of various animals. Each table had books for different animals such as ocean animals, dessert animals, rainforrest animals, insects, dogs, cats, horses, and dinosours. 

The students loved these drawing centers and at the end they were so eager to know when they could work with centers again.  Art centers are definitely something I can implement on weeks in between units and students would love them each time.  I look forward to including more art center days centered around other art media and art processes.