Basic Chalk Drawing Techniques

Hi, my name is Mary DAmico and I am an art teacher in Fairfax County, Northern Virginia. I have been an art teacher for five years. I teach Elementary Education for Art. I have a degree from Kutztown University, Pennsylvania. Its a Bachelor of Science and Art Education, from kindergarten to 12th grade. I also am a private art instructor. Today I am going to be working with one of my students. Her name is Summer and she is nine years old and I have been working with her for a year. Today we are going to be working with chalk pastel with the Still Life and so I am going to talk a little bit about what you are going to need today. First thing, we are going to need paper. So any kind of charcoal paper that is good pound of paper; this is about a 25 pound paper and it can go all the way up to 60 pounds, 80 pounds. Just so its little bit heavier weight of paper to hold the chalk. This is chalk pastels and so they come in pencils; all different colors. They come in the block of chalk. You need a sharpener, if you do have the pencils.

We have blending sticks and they also come in different sizes and different variations of size, so they have the point on them. We also have an eraser, its a kneaded eraser. They come in different colors and it helps to blend the chalk. You also are going to need tissues to help blend your chalk pastel. Well show that a little bit later and well also need your still life.

So depending on what you would like to use for your subject matter, we have still life of flower, so its just something simple with the vase of flowers that you can get from any craft store or it could be a natural vase of flowers. You also are going to need some type of workable fixative to spray our drawing when it is all done, since it preserves the drawing and it does not smear when we eventually put it into a frame. Okay, so lets get started.