The Great Indoors

The Great Indoors

With the world outside on pause for most of us, the best thing we can do is turn our eyes inward to find excitement and intrigue. Luckily, we have all that we need to make our own adventures. 

This week, we turn to our surroundings at home to inspire us! This activity starts with a quick scavenger hunt. Look around your home and locate one of each of the below items (try to keep them on the smaller side for our purposes):

  • Something you use every day
  • The most interesting thing from you pockets/bag/junk drawer
  • One item that smells and/or tastes really great

Things you will need

  • Your three items
  • Blank paper
  • Drawing materials (I’m using crayons, but you can use what works for you)
  • A couple of books/small box for your “stage”
  • A T-shirt, pillowcase or any fabric to drape over your “stage”
Art materials, mug, plastic toy, books, and apple on a wood table.

Make it!

1. First things first! Go on your scavenger hunt and find three items. Mine will be my trusty coffee cup, a small plastic spaceman and a tasty apple.

2. Take some time to arrange your items. Stack the books and drape your fabric over the books or box to create a stage as the base of your composition. Try different arrangements and see how your items interact with each other.

Mug, plastic toy and apple positioned on green fabric.

 

3. Once you’re happy with your set-up, it's time to draw! Start by using some basic shapes (circles, squares, triangles, etc.) to lightly mark where things are going to be on your paper and make adjustments as you go.

 

Crayon sketch on paper.

 

4. Next, shade in the shapes you’ve drawn and add a little bit of detail to guide you. Maybe mark out areas that are more shadowy or other defining features you want to include in your drawing.

 

Crayon drawing of objects on paper.

 

5. Now that you have your base and your guiding details, you can start to add more color and final details you want to capture to really give your work character.

 

Crayon drawing on paper.

 

6. This last step is where the magic happens! Exercise some creative freedom and add imagined details to your drawing. I saw a conversation happening between my spaceman and the bird on my cup, so that’s the direction I went. Take whatever journey feels right to you. Look at the questions below to get your creative juices flowing.

 

Completed crayon drawing on paper.

 

Questions to experiment with

  • What made you choose to set up your objects the way you did? Is there something you could add from your imagination to emphasize that?
  • Did you notice anything special about how your objects interact while you were working on drawing them? 
  • If you don’t see a story unfolding in your drawing, are there any patterns or colors you see that you can bring out further?

 

Share your masterpiece with us by emailing it to manettishremmuseum@ucdavis.edu along with your name, age and a sentence about it to include in our Community Gallery.
You can also tag us at #manettishremmuseum.