And a Few Things I’ve Learned about Art in our Waldorf-inspired Homeschooling Journey

A couple of years ago when we did our Botany block, I did a chalk drawing that had a number of trees, a stream, and plants. Most of the drawing was from imagination and had little of the species that we see on a daily basis. At my daughter’s request, we are studying plants and animals again this year, and I wanted to make a drawing to accompany this block and celebrate the beauty of the changing season from winter to spring. On this board, however, I really wanted to highlight our local ecosystem.

In this post you’ll find

You can see that I’ve chosen to draw our swamp, and every plant, tree, mushroom, and animal are species that we see regularly in spring.  The trees include Long Leaf Pine with his camouflage-like patterned bark on the far right. Peeking out behind him is Red Maple wearing her bright red samaras we see in spring. Scattered along the swamp waters is Bald Cypress, a wise and ancient sister. Lastly to our far right is Sweetgum. 

The plants highlighted are Bladderwort dancing among the Cypress, Spiderwort amongst the fallen logs with the dark blue flowers and yellow centers. Spiderwort is one of our edible plant friends. Violet makes an appearance at the very front with her soft light purple blooms. The ferns, though I’m not remembering the name, are also a local species. 

The mushrooms are all mushrooms that I’ve learned in the last few years. The shelf mushrooms on Long Leaf Pine are a type of polypore. I don’t know that they grow on pine, but I have seen them on several oaks. The two little mushrooms to the left of Sweetgum’s trunk are Rishi. Rishi is a medicinal mushroom with a shiny red finish. When they are young, they often have yellow edges.  The white mushrooms in front of Sweetgum are Destroying Angels. These are fatal if ingested, and well worth knowing. The large one is horribly out of proportion, but it shows the anatomy well, and I knew my daughter would love it, so I left it. Just in front of the largest white mushroom are chanterelles. These form relationships among trees, and there are some in our woods that are fond of a patch of Long Leaf Pine that we are able to harvest from in the spring. They haven’t popped up yet, but I’m looking forward to it. 

I don’t consider myself an artist, but value the whole child aspect of Waldorf of which I gain inspiration and as such, view art with the same importance as academics. Knowing this, I felt compelled to foster and improve my art skills. Like so much of homeschooling, much of my art skills have been learned along side my children. I want to share a few resources that helped support my journey towards cultivating my fluency in art as well as a commentary on this chalk drawing that I’ve done today.

Video

Art Tips I’ve Learned

• It’s helpful to have a foreground, middle ground, and background in a picture. It gives your picture depth.
• Things closer are bigger in general, and things farther away are smaller.
• Things closer will have a darker, warmer hue. As an object gets farther and farther away, it becomes softer and cooler in color.
• Overlapping helps to show perspective. It can also help ground an object. You’ll notice that that I ground the log in the foreground with the violets and the tree on the right with the mushrooms.
• Adding highlighting and shadow really builds depth for objects and give 3-D feel to them. You can do this with blacks and whites, but its more dynamic with different shades of color or even adjacent colors. To do this with the spiderwort (grassy plant in the foreground) I use a yellow for the highlight and darker green for the shadow. For the red maple samara clusters, I use red as the base and highlight it with a red-orange color.
• To draw objects, you can start by blocking them in as shape and then filling in the details. You see me do this with the downy woodpecker on the longleaf pine to the left. I block the view, but I do this again with the leopard frog on the log.

Resources

Some of the most valuable art resources that I have a learned from follow:

• Drawing and Painting in Waldorf Schools
• Drawing with Head, Hand, and Heart
• Waldorfish
• The Law’s Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling
• Let’s Make Art

My Botany and Tree Guides

Botany Block Blog Posts

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