Big lines and little lines
Art & Design · Early Years · The School
Kinds of line
A line can be STRAIGHT like a ruler, CURVED like a rainbow, ZIGZAG like the top of a crown, WAVY like the sea, or a SPIRAL like a snail's shell. Naming them helps you notice them, and once you notice them you start seeing lines everywhere.
Big and little
Lines can be huge, drawn with your whole arm across a big sheet of paper, or tiny, drawn with just your fingers. Big arm movements are good for getting the feel of a line; small ones are good for detail. Doing both is worth more than doing only one.
Fill the page
Try filling a whole page with different lines and nothing else — no picture, just lines. Straight ones, curly ones, thick ones, thin ones, ones that cross. This is what artists do to practise, and it looks surprisingly good on the wall afterwards.
Divide a page into eight boxes. Box one: straight lines. Box two: curved. Box three: zigzag. Box four: spiral. Box five: wobbly. Box six: dotted. Box seven: thick. Box eight: as thin as you can. Now go round and say which one you would use for the sea, for a fence, for hair, for smoke. Different lines do different jobs, and neat is not one of the jobs.