Students at Long Island City High School participated in a foundational drawing warm-up exercise to activate and assess fine motor skills, color recognition, attention to detail, and to generate composition for an abstract artwork.
The students were prompted by teaching artists Pamella Allen and Sarah Macabee to sketch overlapping circles, squares, and other shapes. on paper without lifting their pen from the paper. They then choose a favorite flow sketch, counted the shapes created by the intersecting lines, then added contrasting colors and patterns to each shape created by the intersecting lines with markers and colored pencils. They were careful not to place the same color next to each other.
This activity served as an introduction to the schools of abstract art, expressionism, surrealism and their processes, enabling a connection to automatism, and the free-write.
The teaching artist picked the above image which was created by a student named Arwa. Arwa just arrived from Yemen and is just learning English. She is trying so very hard to grasp everything..this kid is an inspiration. The TAs are proud of this work because Awra is proud of this work in progress. Initially, she was challenged by the task of keeping the pencil on the
paper while creating a continuous line, but after refocused attempts, she mastered the task in both line and color application. Her progress is evident in this work.
