Surrealist Apple Drawing (Rashi School Online Lesson)

Hello everyone! This is a project for my seventh graders at The Rashi School. I hope you'll join along!

This project is designed to help you practice and demonstrate your shading skills, and to give you a great outlet for your creativity and imagination. It is called the Surrealist Apple project.

Materials: Paper or sketchbook, pencil (4H and 2B are ideal, but any kind will do- mechanical is not best though),
Time Needed: Four to six 30-minute sessions
Procedure:
Session 1 & 2 (60 minutes total):
-Watch the intro video below.
-Review shading techniques (video links provided).
-Draw an apple in your sketchbook or on a practice page, and then shade it.
-Create a final draft of an apple on a separate piece of white paper.
-Next, in your sketchbook or practice paper with the drawing of the apple, create a draft of your surreal setting. It can be anything and anywhere you want, but it should be strange and unexpected, and it must be in a realistic style. It can be a pun or a joke. You may use reference images, but no tracing.
Session 3 & 4 (60 minutes total):  On your final draft paper, in the background of the apple, create a surreal setting. Use color- any color media you'd like.

Click below to see the video introduction to the lesson:
Seventh Grade Surrealist Apples- Intro to lesson

Surrealism is an art movement that was started in the 1920's. The style is dreamlike, strange, and sometimes even creepy. Art historians have written that the reason for this style could be because this was a time right after World War One. People were trying to recover from all of the horrible things they had seen during war time, and perhaps being strange or dreamlike was a way of getting some distance from real life, and the nightmare they'd been through.

One of the most famous Surrealist artists was Salvador Dali. He painted The Persistence of Memory.

 

Another famous Surrealist was Rene Magritte, who painted this famous painting, The Son of Man.

Here are some important reminders about shading a round object:

• Start with the darkest values
• Keep your shading lines curved
• The darkest value is under the circle
• Remember to leave a highlight in white

Here is a video to remind you of some shading techniques:

https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=5j_6lVJemWI

And here is a diagram that will be helpful to you:

Here are my sample projects. I had a lot of fun making these. I hope the eye one doesn't creep you out to much... There are also some awesome samples of student work in the links below these pictures.

Surrealist Apple Project Samples
Even More Surrealist Apple Project Samples

Good luck everyone! Enjoy.