Teaching resource for TMAG September 23 2012

Drawing. It’s something that we can all do, but most of us are too scared to do it.

‘Putting Pencil to Paper: A Way to Start Drawing’ is a resource that the creative AccessArt team at the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery (TMAG), Rosie McKeand and Rebecca Tudor, penned for teachers. The aim of the publication is to give teachers the confidence they might need to assist their students with learning to draw. It’s about getting your hands dirty, making mistakes and trying new things. It’s also as much about motivation and the embracing the creative mindset as it is about perfecting technique.

This was a fantastic, rewarding project for us to work on. We decided early on that the resource itself would need to demonstrate the teachings within it, so the style required would be a hand-drawn, playful, and to an extent, messy aesthetic. This appearance would symbolise a work in progress, and a learning process.

We achieved this look by literally hand-drawing the entire publication using various pens at around 200% size. This was a welcome break from the computer. We scanned the pages, modified them in Photoshop and then added them to the InDesign layout. This method made text changes pretty tricky but we believed this technique would be more approachable and true to the subject than simply choosing a hand-drawn-looking font. You might recognise some ‘A’s and ‘W’s from How to Be an Explorer of the World by Keri Smith, which was our main source of inspiration for lettering.

An added excitement to this project was the opportunity to use short videos to communicate some of the drawing exercises. The videos were produced by TMAG and the extraordinary team at Harrison Film and Media. We then imported the films into our InDesign layout and exported the final product as an interactive PDF – meaning you can play the videos within the PDF artwork. This is the first interactive PDF we have produced. There are two versions available online, the larger including the embedded video clips. The small one is a print-only option for those who want to keep their downloads to a minimum!

We were stoked to to receive great feedback from TMAG, and also from Magdalena Lane from the Australia Business Arts Foundation, who recently commented; “It’s nice to see a resource for children treated with such high production values, aesthetics and consideration.”