Drawing and Colour
Primary 3 · Creative Arts
Drawing and Colour
Lesson 1 of 3
12 min
Let's begin
Keza is walking home past the market. A woman is selling agaseke baskets, and Keza stops to stare at one of them.
Around the basket there is a band of pointy shapes. Then a row of small triangles. Then the pointy shapes again. The same thing, again and again, all the way round.
Keza wants to make one like it. But where do you even start? You start where every picture starts: with a line.
Put your pencil on the paper. Now let it walk. The mark it leaves behind is a line.
Take a piece of paper now and make each of these. Do not just read them. Make them.
Wavy and zigzag are the two people mix up. Both go up and down. But a wavy line has round bends, and a zigzag line has pointy corners. Round or pointy — that is the whole difference.
Hold your pencil flat, lying down from your left hand to your right hand. That is a horizontal line. The top of the water on a lake is horizontal.
Now stand your pencil up straight, from the floor to the sky. That is a vertical line. A tall eucalyptus tree stands vertical.
Now lean your pencil over so it is neither lying flat nor standing up. That is a diagonal line. The slope of a hill going down to the road is diagonal.
Let your line walk away and then walk all the way back to the exact dot where it started. It has closed. It has trapped a piece of paper inside it.
That closed line is a shape.
A square and a rectangle both have 4 sides. The square's sides are all equal. The rectangle's are not. That is how you tell them apart.
Look at what Keza drew along the edge of her exercise book:
circle, triangle, circle, triangle, circle, triangle
Something is repeating. But what exactly? Read along from the start until the first shape comes back again. Circle... triangle... and then circle comes back. So the part that repeats is circle, triangle. We call that the repeating group.
Now chop the line into groups:
[circle, triangle] [circle, triangle] [circle, triangle]
Three full groups, nothing left over. So what comes next? A brand new group starts, and every group starts with a circle. The next shape is a circle.
Mugisha drew this border:
leaf, dot, dot, leaf, dot, dot, leaf, ___
Step 1 — Find the group. Read from the start until the first thing comes back. Leaf... dot... dot... then leaf comes back. So the group is leaf, dot, dot. It has 3 things in it, not 2.
Step 2 — Chop it into groups.
[leaf, dot, dot] [leaf, dot, dot] [leaf, ...
Step 3 — Look at where he stopped. The last group has only got as far as the leaf. It still needs its two dots.
Step 4 — So the next thing is a dot. Then another dot. Then the next leaf begins a new group.
Now here is the rule, and you have already used it: a pattern is a repeating group, drawn in the same order every time. Find the group first, and you can always say what comes next.
Look at imigongo art from Nyakarambi, in the Eastern Province. The panels are covered with zigzags and spirals, painted in black, white and red, repeating over and over across the whole board. That is a pattern, made hundreds of years before you were born, out of nothing but lines and shapes.
You already know both ingredients. So you can make one.
Tip
Say your pattern out loud. "Circle, triangle, circle, triangle..." A good pattern sounds like a song. If your mouth trips over it, you have missed something out. Your ears catch a broken pattern faster than your eyes do.
Do each one on paper before you look at the answer. Nobody learns to draw by reading.
A line goes up and down with sharp, pointy corners. What kind of line is it?
Answer: A zigzag line. A wavy line also goes up and down, but its bends are soft and round, not pointy.
The top of the still water in a lake — is that a horizontal line or a vertical line?
Answer: Horizontal. It lies flat, from side to side. Vertical lines stand up, like a tree.
Continue this pattern for two more shapes: square, circle, square, circle, ___, ___
Answer: square, circle. The repeating group is [square, circle]. The line ends with a full group, so the next group starts again with a square.
Continue this one: triangle, triangle, dot, triangle, triangle, dot, ___
Answer: triangle. The group here is [triangle, triangle, dot] — three things. The last group finished neatly at the dot, so a new group begins, and it begins with a triangle.
Uwase is making a bracelet. She repeats the group "red bead, blue bead, blue bead" four times. How many beads does she use?
Answer: 12. There are 3 beads in the group, and 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 12.
Now make your own. Draw a straight line across your page and repeat one group of two shapes along it, six times. Then colour it so the repeat jumps out.
What you learned today
Quick check
A line goes up and down with soft, round bends. What kind of line is it?
