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!

Grade 5/6 Hand Study

This is a beautiful project based on this hand, originally painted by notkaychan on deviantart.

This painting is just stunning, and immediately got me excited. I love the idea of drawing hands because, while it's so difficult to do, it's great to practice drawing something that you can look at and manipulate and touch and feel.

We did a practice run the day before, drawing our hands from sight (but lightly tracing them first to make sure the dimensions were accurate.)  They changed features that didn't seem right, adding bends and curves where they were required. Then, they studied the lines in their hands, picking out only the important, thick lines to include in their hand (too many details didn't seem to do them well.)

When we did the real project, they followed the same process, only this time, we used nice watercolor paper. Once they had drawn them in pencil, they used a thin Sharpie to trace the lines. To paint, students used watercolors, focusing on analogous colors, and BLENDING as much as they could. This was the real challenge of the whole project - students spend over an hour meticulously painting these hands, trying so hard to get the blending just right so that it seemed as though one color washed into the next.

The results are stunning. This was a tough project, and they did well. I am really proud of them!

Every class has the student whose mind is just to creative to control - mine came up with this monster hand below, and honestly, when I do this project again, I will definitely take it in that direction!You have to love the student who is more creative than the teacher!

Ikea inspired art - grade 6

This lesson isn't actually mine, but one that the other grade 6 teacher in my class did with his class. I really loved his idea and inspiration, so I thought I would sneak a few photos and share with you guys!

He got his inspiration from a piece of fabric that he purchased at Ikea during the summer (found here.)

He did a lesson on drawing cartoon faces, using various worksheets that he has (seen below) to give students an idea of how to do different expressions. He then had them begin drawing on a piece of 11 x 17 paper, filling the page with all different shapes and sizes of faces (I particularly love the ones that go right off the page - something I would encourage them to do if I were teaching the lesson!)

He then had students pick a few colors that they would use to color in the drawing, leaving some key sections white, as seen on the Ikea fabric.

It's a really simple lesson, and was perfect for the beginning of the year. I wish I had a photo of them all hung up together because they look really great!