Let's Draw
Chalk Art, Motion and Rhythm
Special | 21m 6sVideo has Closed Captions
Create colorful chalk art using motion, rhythm and blending techniques.
James A. Schwalbach guides young viewers through a lively chalk drawing lesson inspired by motion. Learn to swing your arm, blend colors, and experiment with chalk, water and milk to create vibrant effects. A third-grader’s imaginative turkey design shows how fun and free drawing can be when creativity takes the lead.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Let's Draw is a local public television program presented by PBS Wisconsin
'Let's Draw' is one of PBS Wisconsin's — known then as WHA-TV — earliest educational children's television programs of the1950s. Originally recorded on 16mm film — part of WHA's 'School...
Let's Draw
Chalk Art, Motion and Rhythm
Special | 21m 6sVideo has Closed Captions
James A. Schwalbach guides young viewers through a lively chalk drawing lesson inspired by motion. Learn to swing your arm, blend colors, and experiment with chalk, water and milk to create vibrant effects. A third-grader’s imaginative turkey design shows how fun and free drawing can be when creativity takes the lead.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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>> 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've turned to anything that moves.
Back and forth, up and down, or around and around.
[ Music ] Now to guide you, here's your TV Art Teacher, Mr. Schwalbach.
[ Music ] >> 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 experiment, because I want you to do a few experiments with me.
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 chalks.
Color chalks.
You don't need very many.
This is a rather large box, but five or six colors at least, brilliantly colored chalks.
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 a 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 in 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 hand-defined, 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 crayon, 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 it, and that is it goes on very quickly, very easily, hoders on to 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 and the other spots.
Leaving paper clear.
Can you do that on your page?
Swing your arm back and forth, and leaving part of the paper clear.
Does make a 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 spots.
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 onto your 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 window 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 card.
This is a card 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 the chalk underneath.
So when you mix it, use it as this seventh grade boy has done, leaving part clear and part of the paper colored.
Alright, 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 colors of sand.
Chalk rubbed 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, grayed effect.
That's one thing you can do too well with trend, 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, just 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, rounded 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 learn 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 for chalk.
Now that's about all we need to know for our drawings 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 a 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 here.
Just an ordinary jar of water and take your chalk and watch what I do with it.
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 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 rubbed.
Chalk when you sweat, hardens and becomes just like paint.
Again, I have a drawing to show you.
Thanksgiving's coming up pretty soon and this is 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 checkerboard.
These colors in here.
Checkers on a 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 look almost a little bit like a water color.
Now again, I want to show you drawing.
It's been 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 allow the chalk to flow on top of this wet sheet of paper.
And it gives a sort of an almost water color 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 come 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, key scene paint.
Key scene paint, kind of paint an artist uses.
And it's made with milk.
Now I want to show you a drawing that's been done that way as well.
There's 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 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 used.
But colored chalk never the less.
This first one by Mr. Degas is a drawing of a French lady or 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 end and the side.
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 has tell 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?
We're going to swing back and forth.
We're going to swing our arms.
We're going to draw all sorts of things that swing in our picture.
Of course, the first thing we think of is swinging on the swing on the school playground.
I hope not too many of you draw that because that's sort of a common picture.
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, 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 already for our movie.
So let's swing back and forth and back and forth.
[Music] How about that, boys and girls?
Where those lots of new swinging activities, somethings that swing are very large, like the train, somethings 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?
Only big movements are small movements.
We'll use lots of color or use a small amount of 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 that you will.
And so now let's get those rich, brilliant chalks that big sheet of paper and let's swing our arm on the page.
Let's draw.
[Music] The program you've just seen is the sixth and last in an experimental series in the teaching of creative art through television.
On December 17th, Mr. Schwalbach will return for an expert program on the making of Christmas accessories.
Your TV art teacher has been James A. Schwalbach, 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 to them.
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 Year.
[Music]
Support for PBS provided by:
Let's Draw is a local public television program presented by PBS Wisconsin
'Let's Draw' is one of PBS Wisconsin's — known then as WHA-TV — earliest educational children's television programs of the1950s. Originally recorded on 16mm film — part of WHA's 'School...