How do you use New Augsburg Drawing?

[LauraClark]

I'm intrigued by Augsburg/New Augsburg and have seen it talked about with great excitement here, but I don't understand how to use it. I have trouble making sense of how it's organized and what lessons would look like. For anyone using it can you give me a play by play for a few of the lessons you're doing with your kids? How often do you use it? Are you naturally talented as an artist?

Edited January 2, 2022 by LauraClark

[mathmarm]

Neither Hubby nor I are naturally talented as an artist though we've definitely improved by teaching New Augsburg in combination with The Drawing Textbook to our kids. We gave priority to TDT because we wanted the the kids to be able to draw in 3-dimensions, but we include New Augsburg because it's remarkably well put together, includes drawing guidance for the teacher and the drawing exercises are phenomenal!

The kids have been through a Pre-Drawing curriculum prior to starting formal drawing lessons in either The Drawing Textbook or New Augsburg.
The PreDrawing curriculum is lots pencil-handling skills, learning to draw the basic geometric shapes quickly, and a ton of of tracing patterns, learning to use heavy-lines and light-lines to make the different shapes. Learning to draw ovals and rectangles.

We printed Pg7-12 of the New Augsburg books because they give the "big picture" scope and sequence for the New Augsburg Drawing curriculum. We used this to mesh books 1 and 2 together whenever we needed more time/practice with a skill.

New Augsburg uses 3 stages of drawing in its teaching.
>Object Drawing -- looking at an object and drawing it.
>Copy Drawing -- looking at a picture and drawing it -- this is typically step by step after a teacher ( or series of illustrations).
>Memory Drawing -- visualizing an object or a a picture and drawing it.

Please note that we do a lot of 3D drawing as well, so we chose items to support that endeavor.  We chose items that compliment the first several lessons in The Drawing Textbook.

We do most drawing on paper but introduce Rhythymic Drawing (2-handed drawing) at the whiteboard. We do a 3-5 minute 2-handed drawing most days as a part of our evening wind-down routine.

 

Augsburg 1 and 2 (A1/2, going forward) we use simple items from around the house.
We try and get 4 identical version of each item to go in the drawing collection.
Circular objects to draw: bottle caps, cans of food, a thread spool, baseball caps, a roll of tape, CDs, cups, bowls, candles, ping-pong balls, etc.
Angled objects to draw: Books, food boxes, game boards, playing cards, digital clock, cd-box, tupper-ware, binders, re-usable shopping bags, hand-mirrors, etc.
Natural objects to draw: twigs from a particular bush, blades of grass, single leaves from a tree, a house-plant, fruits, vegetables, roots from the from market. We also purchased fake plants to draw. They don't wilt or break. 🙂

We draw every day and we have about 3-4 Lesson Days each week, with the other days used for Review
We try to draw one round and one straight item every Lesson Day. On Review Days, we draw natural items as well just for varieties sake.

We start with the "recording exercises". We select a single round and a straight item for each Lesson.
We have about a minute to recording a simple drawing of what you see from a particular angle.

Place one item at a time on an empty table or shelf at a time and draw it. We've found that it's important that you only have about a minute per drawing. If drawing is slow and laborious, it will not be enjoyed nor used voluntarily. We err on the side of too-little time for this simple class of objects because want the kids to learn to do really simple drawings quickly.

Starting with Recording Exercises -- For a recording exercise, do not allow embellishment. (ie Don't put designs on blank cups, or capture too much detail to the point that it's inaccurate etc.)

1st) Do the Timed Recording Exercise
2nd) Share and discuss the the drawings
3rd) Now, ID "the best" drawing from the group and discuss
a - ways to improve it and ask the participants
b - why it's "the best" recording of the object from that angle.
4th) Everyone does another Timed Exercise
5th) This is where the Copy-Drawing starts. The Person who drew the best drawing (At Level 1-3, this is almost always the adult) demonstrates step-by-step how to draw the item.
6th) We do up to 3 rounds of copy drawing to get "the gist" of it
7th) We draw the item in timed laps. So we might draw the same object(s) 5-10 times a day.
8th) This is where the Memory Drawing starts. Later, we draw the item again without looking, check our work and try to draw it again if we made a mistake.

Every few days we have a  "review day" and draw the previously learned items from memory, check our work and make any corrections. This is more Memory Drawing. We also draw a Natural Object on Review Days.  We progress through the drawing collections. Any item that is correctly drawn from memory, 4 Review Days in a row, is retired from the collection. On Review Days, we tend to draw a natural object as well.

This will get you into the groove of drawing lessons and start you drawing. Once you've gotten through about half of the collection of round and linear items, you can venture into the positioning exercises.

We explore and introduce Positioning informally with illustrated picture books. Augsburg 1 and 2 are very explicit with the Positioning Exercises. We felt more comfortable sticking closely to what they did in those books because we know very little about positioning and composing drawings. We did the lessons and drilled pretty much as they suggested.

We started positioning with the apples and balls exercises from A1, then created scenes using the items that they knew how to draw, while also teaching them to draw new images of the natural/rural scenes that the book describes. We have a habit of visiting museums and nature reserves. We'd intentionally take pictures of things for them to draw during these excursions.

We chose to focus on the drawing portion of the curriculum. We use pencils and regular paper though sometimes the kids like to use their colored pencils on their drawings.

 

[LauraClark]

Thank you for typing all this-it is very helpful! One of the reasons I've been avoiding a daily drawing is that my kids want to spend 45 min at it. I like the quick drawing time limit-that will help a lot. I think Augsburg is organized in a way that doesn't work in my mind, so with what you said I went back through and reread year 1, taking notes; that helped me organize it a bit. Follow up questions:

1) what age are your kids? Do all your kids work on the same "lesson"? My oldest is 10, what year do I start him in?

2) do you follow the fall/winter/spring suggestion? 

3) what is meant by "crayon"? Is that chalk pastel? 

4) there are 13 weeks of 2 handed drawings listed-I'm confused by time lines, I guess. As in, there's a time period for that one, but not for position exercises. Do you lay everything out for the year or just take one day at a time and progress however quickly works for you? 

5) do you kids get bored with the same style of drawing every day?

[mathmarm]

7 hours ago, LauraClark said:

Thank you for typing all this-it is very helpful! One of the reasons I've been avoiding a daily drawing is that my kids want to spend 45 min at it. I like the quick drawing time limit-that will help a lot. I think Augsburg is organized in a way that doesn't work in my mind, so with what you said I went back through and reread year 1, taking notes; that helped me organize it a bit. Follow up questions:

1) what age are your kids? Do all your kids work on the same "lesson"? My oldest is 10, what year do I start him in?

2) do you follow the fall/winter/spring suggestion? 

3) what is meant by "crayon"? Is that chalk pastel? 

4) there are 13 weeks of 2 handed drawings listed-I'm confused by time lines, I guess. As in, there's a time period for that one, but not for position exercises. Do you lay everything out for the year or just take one day at a time and progress however quickly works for you? 

5) do you kids get bored with the same style of drawing every day?

1) Drawing is skill-based so I recommend that you try to assess his basic skill level. I would take a look at what your 10 year old can draw fluently. Look at all of his drawings, not just things that he worked on for 10+ minutes, but quickly drawn things. Maps or diagrams that he's drawn for school. Scenes of super heroes or illustrations for books that he's drawn. 
Bear in mind that we use Augsburg in such a way as to support and re-inforce TDT.
Can he do basic object drawings? How is he with placement of objects in a scene? How fluently is he with drawing on average? Etc.
When you say that your kids would draw for 40+ minutes, what are they drawing? If they don't have a bunch of drawings laying around the house already, then for the next couple of weeks give them time to draw and take a look at their drawings to assess them.

2) No, we do not follow the fall/winter/spring suggestion. We do adhere roughly to sequence that NA sets out, but we school year round. We don't feel comfortable enough to "re-invent" the drawing curriculum. We use TDT and NA because we deem them to be high-quality and good at their jobs.

3) Certainly not a typical crayola crayon that we think of today. We use colored pencils. I don't know for sure,  the impression that I get is that it was some kind of chalk-marker.

4) We jiggle and fenagle things to work with the wider scope of TDT and just taking our time. We tend to plan 1 semester at a time, but with drawing (and all the skill subjects) just set a broad goal and then take it day-by-day. (ie, my daughter struggled with the angled/rectangular drawings because it the parallel lines have to be straight and roughly even But no struggle with rounded objects. We just support with the foreshortened rectangle needed for rectangular objects)

5) Drawing is not an elective for our kids, so this is like asking me if they get bored with phonics or counting-drills. They typically enjoy drawing, since we use TDT and NA there is some variety between 3D and 2D objects and we try and keep the lesson pleasant. We're not unwilling to bring in some other things to draw or to breathe new life into the lessons with different books from time to time, if need be. But Learning to skillfully draw--like learning reading, writing, music or math--is a journey. It takes a few years to get a foundation laid and there is no royal road to excellence.

If they're struggling with something--ie foreshortened rectangle--then they might get "bored" with drawing lessons, but no one overcomes a challenge or improves at a skill by quitting. They know that they have to do it and the lesson doesn't take long anyway.

 

 

 

[HomeAgain]

You might enjoy looking at the lesson plans Under The Home put together for the series: https://underthehome.org/home?subject=Studio Art&grade=All Grades&layout=iconsonly&week=All Weeks

[LauraClark]

3 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

You might enjoy looking at the lesson plans Under The Home put together for the series: https://underthehome.org/home?subject=Studio Art&grade=All Grades&layout=iconsonly&week=All Weeks

Awesome-thank you!

[LauraClark]

12 hours ago, mathmarm said:

Drawing is not an elective for our kids, so this is like asking me if they get bored with phonics or counting-drills.

Good point. I tend to get into this "what if my kids don't think this is fun" mind set. I needed this reminder (again!) that life isn't necessarily about fun (but to still add it in when possible).

Oh, they do a TON of drawing. When we had done drawing as a subject in the past they enjoyed it so much that they turned it into a huge picture with all the details and colors and it took a huge part of our day. It wasn't really a teachable time, just kind of doodle time.

We did a 1 minute drawing this morning of a cup. Ds5 I kind of just let participate and I went over how to draw a cylinder with ds8 and ds10 after we were done with the drawing. It went really well. My plan is to reread NA books 2-5 asap, outline them, and make a plan going forward. I feel like I have a good direction now and am no longer floundering. Thanks @mathmarm!

[mathmarm]

8 hours ago, LauraClark said:

We did a 1 minute drawing this morning of a cup. Ds5 I kind of just let participate and I went over how to draw a cylinder with ds8 and ds10 after we were done with the drawing. It went really well. My plan is to reread NA books 2-5 asap, outline them, and make a plan going forward. I feel like I have a good direction now and am no longer floundering. Thanks @mathmarm!

That sounds great! I hope that it catches on. I had no idea that someone had already taken Augsburg and made lesson plans out of them. How nifty--the text can be a little thick to read when you have kids running around underfoot.

The links on Under The Home seem like they might help you glance over the lessons in NA2-5, without getting too lost in the weeds of the teachers notes (which aren't always very concrete anyway).