Hi there! I have a bunch of old projects I want to post about and I will just post them with short descriptions. This lesson is a popular one for teaching about Pop Art and Andy Warhol. We read the book Andy Warhol (Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists). The students drew a self-portrait by looking at themselves in a mirror, outlined them in black pen and then I photocopied the pictures four times. The students colored their portraits … Read more…
The creative students at Artisan des Arts made manga self-portraits and I loved them so much I wanted to try it with my own students. The students used the website Face Your Manga to create an avatar. (Of course, out of the thousands of symbols, hair details, eyes and other options, we came across two that were not good for kids, so next year I think I’m just going to print out examples of eyes, noses, mouths, etc and have … Read more…
Materials you will need: Compass Pencil White paper Things to color with like markers, crayons, colored pencils Sharpies (optional) Crayola Twistable Neon Crayons (optional) Goals: understand the meanings and purposes of mandalas in other cultures learn to use a compass use radial symmetry in artwork develop fine motor skills and craftsmanship personal expression Steps: 1. Start by showing and discussing mandalas around the world. There is a slideshow linked above or create your own. 2. Demonstrate how to use a … Read more…
Did that get your attention? How about this? The Science teachers at my school often have the kids create drawings about what they are studying. One of them asked if I wanted to coordinate and have my third graders do more observational drawing. I borrowed these fun scientific specimens and some plants from the school greenhouse for my students to draw. If you want to buy some of your own specimens, they are not cheap, but once you have them … Read more…
October 31 to November 2 is the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead. My first grade students learned about the celebration a bit in their Spanish class and then in art class, we read a story about the holiday and drew these symmetrical skull pictures. The book we read was Day of the Dead, by Tony Johnston. It’s a nice story with great pictures. My only complaint is that the book is very very small, so the kids have to … Read more…
These gorgeous radial designs were made by fifth and sixth graders by using their name. You can see all the steps to make these in a previous blog post. The only difference is that now we use light tables (or hold it up to a window) to trace the design over and over again. We focus on learning about the characteristics and history of Islamic art, which connects with their studies in Social Studies class. We love using the … Read more…
Learn shading! Practice drawing cubes, spheres and more. Add dimension and depth to your drawings! All this can be achieved with SECRET CITY DRAWINGS. Check out this awesome video. GUYS, LOOK AT HIS CLOTHES! amazing. Once in awhile I will show the kids this goofy video and have them draw along for kicks and giggles. If I’m running low on time, we’ll skip the video and just use handouts from his book (affiliate link to Amazon). The kids practice drawing … Read more…
