Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Drawing with Pencils

Homeschool Review Crew

ARTistic Pursuits

Art is not a strong point for me.  It’s something I’ve struggled with over the years because my children love drawing and creating and I’m just not good at it.  Drawing with pencils sounded like something I’d like them to try out and it led us to accept a review opportunity with the Homeschool Review Crew.  We were excited to review another product from ARTistic Pursuits.  This time it is the Beginner Level, Art Core 1, Drawing with Graphite Pencils.  We received both the online course and the book to use. 

In our home, we’ve been using the book and then watching the videos which are included with the book on discs.  This is easier for us with our limited internet connection.  However, we did sample some of the online courses and I think that would be an amazing way to take school with you if you travel.  It would also be better if you had a good internet connection at your house as you don’t have to worry about your discs getting scratched.  That may have happened at our house in the past.  

About the Course

ARTistic Pursuits offers a wide variety of art courses.  You can pick and choose or do them in a suggested order.  They offer courses for ages from Kindergarten all the way up to adults.  

They offer both a book/DVD course and an online course.  Let’s chat for a few minutes about both.  They are the same course, just offered in different formats. 

When you purchase the book/DVD combo you have access to that course forever.  It’s yours.  You have the book and the videos and can then use them over and over again.  This is always something I consider having a large family and different ages. 

The purchase of the online course gives you all of the content from the book/DVD combo but it’s streaming.  You also have a streamed flip page type book so you still can have the experience of looking through the book as well in addition to the videos.  Purchasing the online course gives you access to it for two years. 

For me, the main difference after having had access to both courses is that you get one for life and one for two years.  Otherwise, they have the same content and are both well done and easy to understand and use.  A huge factor in which you purchase will be the quality of your internet connection.  

Drawing with Pencils

This course teaches how to draw with graphite pencils.  There are 9 units within an 18-week course.  You do need to do these in order due to the fact that they build upon each other to help increase knowledge and ability.  

With each lesson, you also get an art history and appreciation lesson.  This is wonderful.  I love that it’s not just here’s what we’re doing, here’s how to do it and now go and draw.  The history and back story with art is wonderful and I love that my children are really learning more than one subject at once.  

The course is an 18-week course.  You can take longer if needed or even doing it faster if you have prior drawing experience and really want to fly.  For us, we often take longer to do the courses as I am trying to include very young children and older children together. 

How We Used

For this course, I decided to just use those children who qualified.  It is geared towards fourth grade and above.  With this in mind, I had seven children using the course.  What we did to make the course work for us is take one unit(there are 9 within this book) and use the unit over two weeks.  This is roughly what they recommend you do to make it an 18-week course.  Recommended is doing the course two days per week so you’re doing the course four days per unit. 

Some of my children did take extra time to do those lessons. For them, we split the actual drawing days out into more than one.  We also added more art history-type lessons that I searched out to further flesh out what was being taught in the book. 

The Four Lessons Taught

1. Art Materials Video Instruction
2.  Creativity: Building a Visual Vocabulary
3.  American Art Appreciation and History
4.  Master Lesson 

The art materials video instruction shows you how to do an art concept through video.  This could be how to draw an outline or how to work on a curve, etc.  Basically, it is a short instructional video. 

For creativity, it is teaching you a concept to help you with your creativity and expand on what you learned in the video lesson. 

The Art Appreciation and History is a bit self-explanatory in that it’s teaching you about art and what role art played in history as well as showing art from a time period.  It also shows what you’ve been learning and how that was used in the art. 

And the master lesson ends each one!  This is the main application stage where you complete a small art project to show what you’ve learned in the other areas of the lessons.

If you’re putting this over the course of two weeks you would do the video and creativity lessons on week one and the art appreciation and master lesson the second week.   Or maybe you’d do the first three the first week and the master lesson the second week. It’s up to you how you break it up and get it down or even how long it takes you to do it!

Our Thoughts

We have used and loved different levels of ARTistic Pursuits and this is no different.  I chose this course because it was something that required minimal art supplies so we could easily do it without having to wait to order in supplies as it is really hard to find art supplies near us.  And I also chose it because my kids have shown interest in using pencils lately to draw with.

I think this is going to be a series we revisit a few times.  I could see some of my kids actually getting really good with drawing with pencils if they pay attention and take their time.  With it being the end of the school year I don’t feel they gave it their best go and think we will do it again next year.

All of my kids ended up watching the videos with us and doing their own versions though I didn’t really offer criticism to them and their drawings.  I just told them they’d done a marvelous job!

The one thing we do differently than how it’s set out is that we watch the whole video for each lesson without touching our supplies.  And then we actually work with the video and pause where needed.  I think having them watch the whole thing and concentrate on what is being said and how to do the process really helps them.  

An Example

Within the first few lessons it teaches edges and outlines and space.  The assignment is to put some fruit and vegetables of different sizes and shapes onto a kitchen towel and have the kids draw them.  We actually didn’t have any fresh veggies at this point in time.  Grocery day was the next day!  So our towel holds just fruit and it might be a bit past it’s prime too. 

And now some of their first attempts at drawing the fruit.  I was shocked with some of the detail of some and how some didn’t even catch the differences in size and how it wasn’t reflected in their drawing. 

These three pictures are from ages 10-13 but I should note that one of the children is developmentally delayed and I wanted to show all the spectrums of this.  I feel like this is a good art curriculum and honestly I wouldn’t mind taking some time and going through it on my own as well.  

We are going to continue using it this spring but I see us redoing this book in the fall before moving on to the Core 2 book.  I love how easy it is to understand and work through and how you can easily go back and redo the lessons if you feel you have missed something. 

ARTistic Pursuits is a curriculum we whole heartedly approve of and recommend to others.  While I’m not an artist and my kids havne’t been in an artistic mood with wanting to be outside I really do feel they are learning and using this in their free time as well. 

Learn More

Ready to learn more about ARTistic Pursuits and the art courses they offer, specifically drawing with pencils?  You can at least learn what Crew members thought of the courses that we were given to review by reading all of the reviews that are linked up on the Main Blog Post over on the Homeschool Review Crew blog.  Reviewers did have a variety of courses to choose from so pay attention to the keywords to know which one you want to read about.  If you want to read more about the one we used, drawing with pencils, look for ArtCore1 which will take you to all the reviews on drawing with graphite pencils.  

ARTistic Pursuits can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.  Social media is a great way to see what other people have been doing with the curriculum as they are apt to tag the company so check out hashtags if you know how they work!