Textured Animals in Grade One

Posted on February 13, 2011 by artlessonsforkids

Next time you talk about lines and texture with your students, why not try this fun lesson that everyone will enjoy! I found this idea over at the Dick Blick Art site where they have a great selection of lesson plans for each grade level. I changed it a bit so click here if you would like to see the original lesson.

We started by talking about lines and the different lines around us in the environment. We went on a line hunt around the school and the students recorded all the lines they could see on some paper.

Back in the classroom, after a brief discussion about all the lines we saw, we then went on to brainstorm some favorite animals. Each child received a 12×18 piece of paper and drew an outline of their favorite animal or insect making sure they used up most of the paper space. I gave out thin markers and they each divided sections inside their animals and filled them up with all sorts of creative lines.

With the two oil pastel colors…gorgeous!

Next, the animals were outlined heavily with oil pastels in two colors just to make them stand out.

The final and exciting step was to paint the backgrounds with some wonderful metallic colored acrylic paints. The kids loved this part and it made the lines and texture on their beautiful animals and insects look amazing! 🙂

Wonderful, don’t you think?

Psst…

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Try This Great Drawing Tool!

Posted on February 3, 2011 by artlessonsforkids

I have been having so much fun using this online drawing tool (http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/#web) I just had to share it with you. Very simple to use, you can change colors, use a variety of very cool drawing effects and the best part… you can save all of your artwork forever and ever. I LOVE it and I’m sure your kids will too! I have already shared this link with my students and will be dedicating some art lessons very soon to explore this tool further while we create some interesting artwork.

Do you know of any other exciting web tools we could all be playing with? 🙂

Here is the quick drawing I made inspired by my recent visit to the Tree of Life.

Cute huh? Now go have some fun!

Tree of Life, Ms. Alejandra

Psst…

Oil and Chalk Pastels in Grade Two

Posted on January 19, 2011 by artlessonsforkids

I absolutely love art lessons that involve chalk and oil pastels. The kids enjoy the vibrant colors of oil pastels and the magic that occurs when you blend several chalk pastels together!

Grade two’s went on a hunt for flowers so that they could draw them as big as possible inspired by Georgia O’Keefe. We are now huge fans of this wonderful famous American artist. My students related very quickly to her artwork and fell in love with the giant flowers.

After saying ‘abra-cadabra’ and turning all of my students into tiny people, we all imagined being in a garden surrounded by GIANT flowers. Each child had a real flower to draw and they drew these on 12×18 black construction paper. They outlined their finished drawings with white crayon and decided whether to color in their flowers with warm or cool colors.

Using chalk pastels

One group colored in with chalk pastels and used their ‘magic fingers’ to blend the colors and the other group colored in with oil pastels. The backgrounds were the opposite of their flowers. make sure to use good quality pastels. I use these Sargent brand for chalk and these for oil pastels.

How gorgeous are these? I am sure Georgia would have loved them as much as I do!