With pencils, rulers, erasers, and sketchbooks in hand, Grade 7 students explored campus, noting the lines and designs that come together to form the buildings they spend so much time in. They then illustrated their observations as they created one-point perspective drawings.
One-point perspective drawings show how objects appear to get smaller as they get further away, converging towards a single "vanishing point" on the horizon line. It is a way of drawing objects so they appear realistic and three-dimensional.
With the new Boehly Upper School or newly renovated Banfield Academic Center (BAC) as their subjects, boys snapped pictures, then worked to recreate them.
“Before we started drawing, we learned how to make a vanishing point with a cube and how to draw angles,” Brody ’29 said.
Sean Nolan, Middle School Visual Art and STEM Teacher, explained the objective was also to take time to see and appreciate the architecture around us.
“It starts to teach them to see things, not only from an X and a Y axis, but also along a Z axis for depth,” Nolan said.
“This is the first time I’ve worked on a one-point perspective drawing. It was challenging because you have to get the proportions correct,” Lucas ’29 said. “You would have to erase lines and redraw them until everything was perfect. You had to be very precise with your drawings.”
Nolan’s is not the only class that is incorporating the Middle School’s new home into assignments. Science students created their own units of measurement to make a map of the BAC.
The list of measurements included wingspans and sheets of paper as boys used their creativity to make sure their maps were as accurate as possible.
"Our new building provided the ideal opportunity for our boys to practice measuring with precision and accuracy," Middle School Science Teacher Bryan Placide said. “It is a tool they will continue to apply in their respective scientific studies here at Landon. In addition, I believe it encouraged the boys to truly appreciate their new space.”
