Over the course of 7 days, my advanced drawing classes practiced drawing different fabrics. Yes I made them practice that long before letting them start haha. Before we started drawing, I showed them the following demo video:
After the video, they began drawing on a small sheet of paper (regular copy paper cut in half). They were asked to crop the image/fabric however they liked. I provided shirts of mine for them to reference from during the practice portion. Below are student examples from their first attempt at drawing fabric. I allowed them to use either pen or pencil. Since this was their first time drawing fabric I wanted them to use whatever they felt comfortable with.
After about 3 days of working on the still life fabric on a small scale, I provided them with the following worksheet. It allows them to truly focus on the creases and work on values within the fabric. They were given 2 days to complete as much as they could with graphite pencils only – no pen.
Here is the fabric practice worksheet
Once the 2 days spent on the worksheet were completed, we moved onto a small scale version of their soon to be final drawing. I provided shirts, 9″ x 12″ toned paper, charcoal pencils and soft pastels (black and white). By this point, they were really getting the hang of drawing fabric and were ready to move onto charcoal. Below are some student examples from the miniature charcoal fabric drawings. I gave them 3 days to complete as much as they could. I never pressured them to completely finish a practice drawing because I just wanted them to get used to drawing technically. I knew that if I asked them to complete a practice drawing, they would rush.
They had 8 days to completely finish their fabric drawings on 18″ x 24″ toned paper. Below I provided the guidelines on to how to properly use the charcoal and soft pastels (I went into depth on each image and why it was approved or denied)
Here are the guidelines on how to use the materials
Below are the FINAL products of some of their pieces
Just Your Everyday Art Teacher 