Chinese Lion Dancers - grade 4/5

This is a project that I did with my grade 4/5 class. We began the project back in January, if you can believe it, and it took four or five class periods for them to finish (much longer than I had anticipated!) We just had an unfortunate run of interruptions during our art block that made this project take so much longer than I would have guessed.

I originally saw this project on SmartClass. She has great directions for how to draw the lion, so I would encourage you to check them out!

With me, students drew in Sharpie, and then added fireworks using pastels during the first class. The next three classes were painting - students used watercolors for most of the painting, then used gold and silver tempera paint to add in details. They turned out beautifully!

Our March break is ending, back tomorrow after a week off. Yikes! Better start planning!

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!