Dog sled teams drawings and folded papertoys, kids' and adults drawing classes, 3/06 &7/17

In honor of the Iditarod dogsled race which started this past weekend, we do a session every year.
Adult class had to come up with a list of practice exercises as I scribbled them down on a piece of paper. I cut apart the list. There were perhaps 16 ideas. From there, 4 students each pulled out a slip. I read them off. I did however decide what order we would do them in.
a) blind contour drawing
b) continuous line drawing
c) draw the shapes you see - the negative shapes
d) there was one option that I changed my mind about. Now I don't remember what that was, or what I changed it to.
Our final drawings were also continuous line but then use that for coloring.

After we finished, one student suggested we do a session where we put one reference photo, of whatever that day's subject, through several different exercises. I am still not quite clear. I think this means to limit the exercises to apply them to the same reference source each time.

The kids' class, which was both kids and adults, we made a papertoy dogsled team. Fold a sheet of paper in half lengthwise. fold up a 1/2" edge/lip along the existing fold edge. Then we drew dog figures created by drawing rectangles and triangles. Class drew along with me. There is plenty of leeway in how to draw these dogs.

Draw tabs or merry-go-round poles coming up from the dogs' backs. These will eventually get glued over each other to keep the dog pairs standing up rather than flapping over. The flap along the bottom fold gets spread out to keep the dogs separate. We experimented with how we could trace the dogs we had drawn onto the other side of the folded paper. I have yet to solve that. Color the team before you cut out the figures. If you were to cut out first, it would be too hard to color. Better to color first and then cut out. It is ok to cut out very simply.

Some of our visitors were here for mid-winter break and staying in a hotel. They asked to take a piece of paper so they could try to make the sled too. Yes, of course! I did not think fast enough to offer more paper. I hope they were able to find more supplies at the hotel.