Value Drawings of Glass

Submitted by: Ned Fox, art teacher at
Northwood Jr./Sr. High.
Level: 9th-12th

Summary

This assignment is one of my favorite drawing lessons and the students really get into this. This lesson takes 3 to 5 days to finish. Show the students examples of glass and how light reflects off glass. Show examples of things behind glass.

Ask: How does the glass distort the image? What happens if the glass is not flat? What does that do to the image?

I then like to start the students with a drawing of a window in a house using 4B Drawing Pencils. After the window is drawn I have the students shade in the window and blend the glass area with a paper towel and then make streaks with WHITE Magic Rub Erasers at an angle. The window really looks great. From here I have the students think up a drawing they want to do (everything has to be made of glass). Some examples - drawing of a glass man breaking through a glass brick wall - or a glass house that you can see through to all the glass things inside of it, and so on. Great Problem Solving Lesson too.

Example adapted from Simple Gift Galleries

For those into video games, you could point out what players in the game look like when they are in stealth mode in the game Halo. They are invisible but you can can still see them slightly because the background is distorted through them similar to glass.

NOTE: This lesson was submitted in the early days of IAD when teachers had no scanners or digital cameras to take pictures of student work. We have substituted another image that has been digitally manipulated to show the eraser streak marks in the windows.

Materials:

• Glass panes, glass jars, and glasses

• 4B Drawing Pencils

• Paper towels

• 18" X 24" (46 x 61 cm) Drawing Paper