Grade-8 Art Exhibition: "Skulls"

For many centuries, artists have been intrigued by skulls, using them in their drawings, sculptures and paintings. On a purely technical level, many artists and art students have sought to understand how bone structure influences facial expression. Once you understand what lies beneath the surface, you can benefit from this knowledge and apply it to your artwork.

In this spirit, the 8th-graders have been studying the structure of the skull as part of their work on drawing the human figure.

Their studies have included making copies of drawings by important Renaissance masters, including Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Albrecht Dürer: quick line sketches from life models - no time for details! - copying drawing of the human skeleton; drawing "robots" composed of basic geometric forms that can help in the understanding of the volumes of the human body; and going outside to look at their shadows, which they then traced as life-sized silhouettes.

For this exhibition, they made frontal drawings of a skull, using construction lines in order to better understand the importance of proportions.

They also learned to spatially understand width and height - without the use of a ruler - and the importance of beginning with a good composition.

They finished their skull drawings with chalk, charcoal, compressed charcoal, pastel and/or oil pastels, using a shading technique for creating light and dark sides to their drawings which increased the sense of volume. To this end, they were only allowed to use three shades: white, black and medium grey.

The fact that every skull came out differently demonstrates the character of each student, making this exhibition especially interesting!

We thank you for your interest in our art project and hope you will enjoy the show!