Colored chalk and the rhythms of swinging. This is the combination to be used today on
the Wisconsin School of the Air Creative Art Program. Let's draw. James A. Schwalbach extension
specialist in art and design of the University College of Agriculture is your TV art teacher.
We'll explore many ways of using colored chalk in our drawings.
And for picture ideas, we turn to anything that moves. Back and forth,
up and down or around and around.
Now to guide you, here's your TV art teacher, Mr. Schwalbach.
Hello boys and girls. Today we're going to swing. We're going to swing back and forth.
We're going to swing with our bodies, with our arms, and we're going to swing with our chalk.
So our drawings just literally go back and forth and back and forth on the page, trying to catch
that simple movement. And to catch that movement on our drawings, we're going to use colored chalk.
You may have used it before. It's a very, very fine medium to use. Let's just check our materials
and see if we're ready for our experiments because I want you to do a few experiments with me.
If you look at your desk right now, you have on your desk one sheet of paper to experiment with
and a second sheet of paper to draw upon two sheets of paper, one to experiment, one to draw with.
Then you're going to need chalk, colored chalk. You don't need very many. This is a rather large box,
but five or six colors at least, a brilliantly colored chalk. In addition, it might be a good
idea if you have your desk protected. I have on the top of my desk here a piece of blotting paper.
You may not have that, but newspaper on the top of your desk will work just as well.
And then if you tend to be a little bit messy, the chalk gets around. It might be a good idea
to put some paper, a newspaper on your lap, or if you have an apron, let's wear that.
Now those are actually all the materials you're going to need today, but I'm going to show you
two other ways of using chalk. And so I'm going to have that. If you want to use them and have
them handy fine, I'm going to use some water in connection with my chalk drawing. You may want
that, but it's not necessary at all, and I know you aren't ready with it. And in addition to the
water, I'm going to show you how chalk can be used with ordinary milk. And if you have some
handy, and I don't suppose you have, you might want to use that. But I'll just show you how it's
used. An old rag to clean off your hands or clean off your brushes if you're using it with water,
and a brush to use with the chalk with water and milk. But all you really need today
will be the chalk, the paper, and the newspaper to cover your desk and protect yourself.
Now are those all set ready to go? Fine. Then suppose you pick up a chalk, almost any color
will do, and get ready to experiment with me. We use chalk very much like our crayons.
Holding it loosely in our hand, I like to hold my chalk this way. You may have a different way of
holding it, just quite loosely and easily in your hand. And swinging your arm as you work,
mixing and blending the colors. Now chalk has one advantage over crayon, and that is,
it goes on very quickly and very easily, howders onto the pages, and mixes well.
But let's try it in a couple of ways. If you've got a piece of chalk ready in your hand,
fine. Hold it loosely and let's just swing that on the paper in this manner, but don't completely
cover the page. Leave some of the paper clear. You can see, as we've done that, I haven't put
chalk in here, and I have chalk in the other spot. Leaving paper clear. Can you do that on your page,
swing your arm back and forth, and leaving part of the paper clear. It doesn't make any
difference what you do with it. Now, let's pick up a second color. Darker or lighter,
it doesn't make too much difference. Take that and swing that in a little different stroke,
right on top of this, right over in between, over in some spot. Now you see, as you look at this,
I have some parts where I've got chalk on top of other chalk right in here,
the lighter color underneath, the darker on top in this case, other places I have chalk
on pure paper. Now that's one way you have of mixing and using your chalk, of letting the
chalk go between the other colors. Let me show you a drawing done by a boy, a seventh grade boy,
to a winter scene that used that sort of thing. If we look up here in this drawing,
you'll see right here in this section of the drawing, you'll have clear paper showing around
that car. This is a car stuck in a snow drip. That's where the young artist,
seventh grade boy, has left the paper clear, all these lighter sections. Then here you have
a color of a chalk mix. Here's the more chalk mixed in here, another color put on top of it.
Over in here, a second color on the clear paper, a second color on a chalk underneath.
So when you mix it, use it as this seventh grade boy has done, leaving part clear and part of the
paper color. All right, another thing in using your chalk. I said you could blend colors by putting
one color on top of another and not rubbing them at all, just lying the color to stand.
Chalk rubs very easily. It's a powdery dusty sort of thing. And so we can just take this
color that we put and just take our fingers and just blend it and rub this a little bit.
And you'll see how that black dark color comes into the lighter color underneath and you get
a sort of a shaded grade effect. That's one thing you can't do too well with pran, but you can
with chalk. It's rubbing it with your fingers. The thing you have to watch out with that,
and many boys and girls don't, is they just rub that too much. It's sort of polish it until all
the colors are just muddy and dirty and don't look very nice. But I have a drawing done here,
again by a seventh grade girl, I believe this time. Yes, a seventh grade girl where
that chalk has been rubbed, but it hasn't been rubbed too much. Let's look closely at this.
You see this pumpkin right here in the center. Here there's a light orange color and on top of
it a darker brown down in here. And in this section of it, the artist has taken her finger
and just rubbed up here blending that chalk into the pumpkin area. And that gives it kind of a
shaded round of effect. Now look at the line. The line itself is placed right on top of the
pumpkin and that line is quite clear because there the artist did not rub it, put another dark
color right on top of another. So there are two ways in a youngster's drawing to use chalk. Rub
or not rub and you'll want to do both, but don't rub them too much. Now we learned in brush drawing
that we could use all sorts of different strokes. We can do that in chalk too. You can take a
chalk and do this sort of thing with a just cross hatching it, making dots in the center of it as
you wish. You get all sorts of texture. You can take a stroke and using the side of the chalk
and get broad solid areas and do that. There's all sorts of things you can do with the chalk.
Now that's about all we need to know for our drawing today. Swinging our arms freely, mixing
our colors together, using strokes in different ways, rubbing the chalk with the tips of our
fingers quite lightly and not rubbing them too much. But I want to show you in addition
three other things you can do with the chalk. You may not use them today, but I think they'd be nice
to know. First of all, you can just take chalk and take this jar of water that I have. You're
just an ordinary jar of water and take your chalk and watch what I do with it. I just take the
chalk and dip it right down into the water so I get the end of the chalk wet. When I take chalk
and it's wet at the end and draw it, I'll get a very very hard solid color, a very very brilliant.
Rise up, dip it back in again and put it on here. Now in doing it that way, you get a bright color.
It comes very hard and it has another advantage too. Chalk when you dry is quite dusty and it rubs.
Chalk when you sweat, hardens and becomes just like paint. Now again, I have a drawing to show you.
Thanksgiving is coming up pretty soon and this is a kind of an unusual turkey done by
a third grade girl. I don't suppose you've seen a turkey that's been as decorative as this,
but then a third grade girl has a right to invent her own turkey. But the thing I want to show you
about this drawing is this checker board. These colors in here, checkers and the paper in between
were done with chalk dipped in water so that it doesn't rub, it doesn't smear and it becomes a
very bright hard color. Now we won't spend too much time on that, but you might want to use it in
your picture. Now we can use chalk a second way and that uses water as well. We use chalk, wet chalk
on dry paper, well the opposite of that is just take a brush and smear lots of water on the page.
In fact, you could just dip the paper right in water if you wish, lots down on here.
And then pick up a chalk, most any color will do and use a dry piece of chalk,
white on a wet paper and you'll find that'll go on very, very easy mix and blend quite quickly
and looks almost a little bit like a watercolor. Now again, I want to show you a drawing that made that way.
This drawing here was done by a fifth grade girl of a cave scene and if you look at this quite
closely, I think you'll see that these various colors are sort of run and blend together.
The whole sheet of paper, this fifth grade girl took this paper and just put it down into a big
tub of water and wet the whole paper and then allowed the chalk to flow on top of this wet
sheet of paper and it gives a sort of an almost watercolor effect. That's a second way of using
your chalk, dry chalk on a wet sheet of paper. Now there's a third way of using it and that's
probably the most different of all and one that you may not have heard of before.
And that's again taking our chalk, drawing with our chalk, this time on a dry sheet of paper,
making solid areas, making lines if we wish. Then taking our brush and just dipping the brush
right in milk. Now you can use buttermilk, you can use ordinary milk, you can take dried milk,
powdered milk and mix it with water and just take that and just put that milk right on top
and be sure you put it right on top. Don't go back and forth like this. Just put it right
on top of this chalk and you'll see that will tend to blur and rub the chalk a little bit.
And it turns it into a kind of a paint. As a matter of fact it turns it into a very cheap,
I call it a poor man's casein paint, casein paint kind of paint and artist uses and it's made with
milk. Now I want to show you a drawing that's been done that way as well. Another Thanksgiving
drawing. This again is quite unusual. This is done by a third grade girl this time again.
Here's a big pumpkin setting up here with a big face on it, a little corn cob over in here,
some little figures running around down in here. But I want you to look particularly at this
pumpkin. And if we can get that good and clear on there, I think you'll see if you look right
here at the pumpkin where the brush has gone back and forth, back and forth just on the area of
the pumpkin. There has been chalk on there and the brush going back and forth to blend that
chalk together to make again a kind of a paint out of it. Now those are many different ways
of using our chalk. Swinging our arm freely, using lots of colors, mixing them and blending them,
but only lightly with the tips of our fingers. And we've seen lots of drawings that boys and girls
have done with this. Now I'd like to show you two paintings made by a French artist. Mr. Degas,
he was a very famous French artist making pastel paintings. Now pastel paintings are just like
chalk drawings. They're called pastel paintings because the chalk that he used was a little bit
finer quality than the chalk he used, but colored chalk nevertheless. This first one by Mr. Degas
is a drawing of a French lady, her head, top of her dress here. And I want to show you in this
where here in this area of the drawing they have taken the chalk and used it probably on the side
of the chalk rubbing in a solid area. Then right on top of this you can see lines. Those lines were
done with the edge of the chalk just like our boys and girls did it. Mixing it, blending it,
and using ends and the sides. Up here in the face there's been a little bit of rubbing,
not very much, a little bit of rubbing with the fingers to blend the chalk together.
Here is clear paper, just the paper showing clear paper down in here, not covering the paper
completely. Let's look at a second painting by Mr. Degas. This one a pastel drawing again
of some ballet dancers. Again you can see in here here the paper is a little bit more covered,
but there's still spots of the paper showing too. Let's look down in this section of the girl's
dress where several different colors have been mixed and blended together. Some of the strokes
of this chalk are still showing. In other places the finger has been used to blend it together.
So artists do it that way as well. Now what are we going to draw about? Well we said we're going
to swing, we're going to swing back and forth, we're going to swing our arms, and we're going to
draw all sorts of things that swing in our picture. Now of course the first thing we think of is
swinging on the swing in the on the school playground. Well now I hope not too many of you draw that
because that's sort of a common picture. Can you think, just think a minute, can you think
of the most different kind of swinging you've ever done. Maybe it's something very unusual
that you swung from. I'm not going to give you any ideas here, I want you to think for yourself.
Or not only do you have to swing, but what kind of swinging activity can you think of different
things that swing back and forth. Again we have a movie for you, a film of swinging activities,
things that go back and forth, people, animals, and objects. And while you look at that movie,
where you get all the different ideas you can about swinging so that you'll have lots of them
all set for your picture. And I think now we're all ready for our movie. So let's swing back
and forth and back and forth.
How about that boys and girls? Where those lots of new swinging activities, some things that swing
are very large, like the train, some things that swing are very small, like the little sea.
Did that give you some ideas of different swinging movements? How will you draw those in your picture?
Will it be big movements or small movements? Will you use lots of color or use a small
harmonic color? Will you be swinging yourself while you're drawing or will you have some ideas
for swinging pictures that will be different from everything in the movie? We hope that you will.
And so now let's get those rich brilliant chalk, that big sheet of paper, and let's
swing our arm on the page. Let's draw.
The program you've just seen is the sixth and last in an experimental series in the teaching
of creative arts through television. On December 17th, Mr. Schwabach will return for an extra program
on the making of Christmas accessories. Your TBR teacher has been James A. Schwabach, extension
specialist in art and design of the University College of Agriculture. We would like to see samples
of your work that result from these programs. Send them to WHATV Madison 6 Wisconsin. Send in
your comments and suggestions too. Next week we'll have a vacation during the Thanksgiving
holiday. But the following week on December 3rd, Mrs. Fanny Steve will bring you the first of two
rhythm and games programs for the younger children. This is the Wisconsin School of the Air.