High School Texture Drawings and Paintings

Here students looked at pictures from calendars. They made contour drawings with pencils, then went over the pencil lines with technical waterproof fine-point pens. Thereafter, they used watercolors. Before doing this lesson, students practiced making all sorts of patterns with the pens that I think may have helped them warm up in using the pens. So proud of them!

Celebration of Spring by 2nd and 3rd Graders

Raining cats and dogs!

Sixth Grade Rural Scenes Art Lesson

This lesson came from Deep Space Sparkle blog which I believe was inspired by a lesson from Artsonia as was noted. Look over to your right and you can click on Deep Space Sparkle- it's a wonderful site, with all sorts of ideas and has kept me afloat as a first year art teacher!

You can find all of the steps on her blog which are described very well and even give you a little mapped out drawing of the barn's dimensions. If you pass out that map as I did, one suggestion I would give would be to re-do the map because some of the numbers are not clear for the students to understand. She also suggests that you ask for parent volunteers to help with the drawing process- that is a good idea as students will need your help in getting the dimensions right! I went over the dimensions together with the whole class, then answered individual questions- forming teams may be a good idea for this part as well.

We used fine point permanent markers when we outlined, which really gave each artwork a nice, detailed look. One thing I would do differently would be to give examples of farm animals that the students could draw. We didn't spend a lot of time on the animals which is something that I would do next time around.

I only have 2, 30 minute sessions (yep, 30 minutes is all- clean up, set up included) so these took over a month to do! The end results were beautiful and the students took great pride in their artworks! So "Thanks" to Deep Space Sparkle- she is a genius!

Kindergarten and First Grade Cows Standing in a Sunflower Field

First set up your composition. I started with using the head of a  cow template, and passed that around to each child so that they could trace around it. That's all of the tracing they did. Though I don't like to use templates, this cow head seemed a little complicated for such little people. To my surprise the template allowed for the rest of the project to go smoothly.

We drew the heads, saving the bodies for last. Next, we drew sunflowers in the foreground. Then finally, the cow's body. Showing examples of pictures of cows and sunflowers allows students to pick and choose their designs!

We then traced over the lines with a black crayon. I would have rather used black oil pastels, but they are just little nubs at this point in the year! Thereafter, they colored in with crayons. Oil pastels would be better though, offering more vibrant colors.

Afterwards, we painted over our scenes with watercolors and viola!