Eye study - grade 5/6

I am trying to do more complex drawing activities with my older students. I mostly avoid them, because I am so terrible at drawing myself, but I definitely value the importance of learning to see proportion, and drawing from observation.

For this project, students simply used a mirror, and drew what they saw. We talked a lot before they began, about the proportions of an eye, and how to draw them. They looked at printouts showing how to draw an eye. They even did a run through using just pencil on computer paper.

For the actual drawing, students worked with pencil on drawing paper, doing everything but the eyelashes and eyebrows. Then, they used drawing pastels and charcoals to outline their eyes, and add the hair details. Finally, they used chalk pastels to give them color. I think they are just beautiful! I really wish I had more that I could show, but I always have a lot of trouble getting pictures of projects on white paper. It's completely the fault of my photography skills, it's not for lack of beautiful examples!

When students were finished we still had a lot of time, so I showed them how to do words in two point perspective. I find this so hard! I actually had to have a student do my lettering for me, as I find the 3d part just brain meltingly confusing. I did an exploding letter technique on my letters, and if I ever did this project as a full on class, not just as an extra, I would definitely have students color it in this way! (I'll be posting a project I did using this technique later this week.)

Who else has Spring break coming up? Ours is in one week!