still life contour drawing

Drawing is all about seeing, and still life drawing lessons are particularly good for emphasizing the importance of careful observation. When teaching this still life lesson, I started by "thinking out loud" to show how I observe and define shapes and lines. With a quick model drawing, I showed how to overlap items, talked about how those items in front are a little further down the page than those behind, and talked just a little about shadows and shading. Then I turned the kids loose with colored pencils in secondary colors only.

The drawing subject matter is always simply a collection of random items I have lying around the house, plus a few gems from a box I keep in the garage labeled "candles and trinkets".... you know... those items you don't really want to throw away quite yet, but don't really want out, either.

In this case, I also brought in a selection of colorful gourds and a bouquet of autumn-colored chrysanthemums, so each of three tables had a bud vase with flowers. Each table had a slightly different selection of items and every student already had a mini pumpkin on their desk so I invited them to add those to their drawings. I also suggested that they did not need to draw every item, that they could draw only those items they wanted to draw. Other directions included not to color everything in, and to think about overlapping and shading.

And to look, look, look very carefully at the items they were drawing.

I love the vastly different results from different students. Some drew small, some drew large, some overlapped the items, some had them lined up across the center of the page. Some paid great attention to details, others drew in a more general, stylized way.

This drawing lesson followed a "looking at art" activity in which we looked at Norman Rockwell's "Freedom From Want"... an activity that included talking about what was going on in the painting, which turned into talking about main ideas and details. If someone said it looked like Thanksgiving, I asked how they knew, which turned into a discussion about details. I thought that would be a nice segue into a "harvest" type still life drawing, but realized pretty quickly that I had too many generic items in the set-ups and not enough "harvest" items. Something to remember for next time!

Still life drawing is a great way to add a little seasonal art to the classroom, and it's a great way to integrate science, too! It requires practically no prep, other than gathering the items, and it's amazing how much attention some students will give to their drawings. This art lesson is available in my TeachersPayTeachers store. Look for Still Life For Kids:

art goes back to school

In the back-to-school preparation frenzy, art education is the last thing on many, if not most, teachers' minds. And yet, what could be more fun... and even relaxing... than a little art during the first week of school? Best of all, teachers can find out a lot about students' fine motor and other skills, as well as their work habits and level of responsibility and concentration. 

One of my favorite things to do as an art teacher was to start the year with a little multimedia exploration. I set it up like Kindergarten stations, with four different media on four different tables for 1st and 2nd graders, and 3 different media on 3 tables for Kindergarten. Students started in one place and took their papers with them to the next station and added to their design. Kindergarten students used the same paper for the whole exploration, while 1st and ends used two sheets of paper, mixing two media on each paper.

First and Second stations included all of these, and Kindergarten stations were the same, minus the paint:

• tempera paint with brushes and straws for blowing
• crayons
• colored pencils with shapes to trace
• construction paper, scissors, and glue

It took a little extra thinking to decide in which order to arrange the stations for rotation, because each group of students started with a different media, and I wondered how feasible it was going to be for those who started at the paint table. In the end, I decided to just not worry about it and see what happened. Before starting the activity, I quickly introduced the materials at each station and explained the procedure, including making a point of explaining to students that they would keep the same paper when they moved to a new station. Other than that, I didn't really give any earth-shattering directions, because I really did want this to be an exploration.

An interesting side benefit of this activity on our first meeting day was that it gave me an instant overview evaluation of important skills: use of scissors, glue, and brushes; painting technique development; pencil and crayon grip; and fine motor and eye-hand coordination skills. It even revealed what kind of sense students had in putting together a composition, including whether or not they thought about what they were doing. It was especially interesting to see some students just start cutting shapes and gluing them on the paper at random, while others would spend time arranging their shapes just so while gluing, or giving slow, thoughtful attention to how and where they applied paint to paper, or how they lined up shapes for tracing.

Some students were obviously organized and/or methodical, and some students were obviously less so:

For those teachers and administrators who think art is just an extra for random Friday afternoons before vacations, I propose that there is much to be learned, by students and teachers, when children make art. Teachers can learn much about individual students' fine-motor skills, spatial sense, responsibility, and more, and students can learn how to develop concentration, practice motor skills, and more.... not the least being able to express themselves and create a little beauty for this world.

So.... how about starting the school year with a little mixed-media exploration? My store at TeachersPayTeachers has lots of art lessons for teachers who don't have art background. This mixed media exploration is included in the bundle Start With Art, and you'll find a couple of free art lessons, too! Check it out!
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about art materials

When I taught art in Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades for two years, I had the luxury of a generous budget and was able to buy all the art materials I needed for a basic art curriculum. I didn't wander off into anything fancy; I stuck to the basics and the process of creative art-making. These days, I am retired and subbing in other peoples' classrooms, and I am intrigued (and sorry to say, not in a very good way) about the lack of quality art materials out there for kids to use. When it comes to buying art materials, my philosophy is to always buy the best quality possible. The cost may be initially higher, but the returns are greater: they generally last longer, work better, and produce much better results. I stick pretty much to the basics and stay away from most "specialty" items like glittery watercolor or tapping glue bottles. I follow this philosophy both for classroom art materials and for my own art-making process, because I want kids to feel like artists when they are making art, not to struggle with the materials they are using.

What do I consider basic? And are some brands better than others? Does it really matter what brand you buy?  You bet!  My favorites...

CRAYONS.   Good quality crayons have better color, probably due to the ratio of pigment to wax (I'm not a crayon scientist, so I'm guessing here). Poor quality crayons have more wax and the colors are not as bright, no matter how hard you press. I won't buy anything but Crayola. The reds are bright. The yellows are strong. Many teachers buy cheaper brands and my experience is that the colors are just very bland. And by the way, I want the colors to be named what they are. I came across some crayons in a friend's classroom that had color names like Blueberry Swirl or Grape Soda (I am making those up, but you get the gist), which are very cute and all, but were not even that accurate. Colors have names and don't need to be cutified. I like that Crayola names their blues Indigo, Blue, Cerulean. These are real names that artists use.

CONSTRUCTION PAPER CRAYONS are great to have on hand. They are made for drawing on dark colored construction paper. They have some kind of reflective material in them. Kids love using them! They are made by Crayola, and are wrapped with black paper so they are easily distinguished if they get mixed with regular crayons. For general storage, I like to keep crayons in zip baggies instead of in their boxes. It's easy for kids to find the color they need, and a whole class set will fit in one shoebox-sized plastic tub.

MARKERS:  I like Crayola markers for kids' use. They seem to last a pretty long time and the colors are pretty bright. I always store them with the tips facing down. This way, the ink is always saturating the tip and they stay nice and "juicy" instead of drying out. Laying them down in a tub works, also. For my own use, on charts and for art lessons where I do demonstrations, I use Mr. Sketch. The colors are very vibrant and the chisel point lets me make bolder lines so that the charts are easy to read. I like the smelly ones.

COLORED PENCILS:  Crayola again, although there are other brands that are pretty good, too. I like having a good supply of multiple, basic colors. I generally buy boxes of 12 colors and then dump them all in a plastic tub. They are great for still-life and other observation drawing.

GLUE STICKS:   I only buy UHU. It's firmer than cheaper glue sticks, doesn't clump or squish into a mess, and lasts a lot longer than any other brand I've used. I once put in an order for UHU glue sticks when I was teaching art, and the school secretary substituted a cheaper brand. I was working in three schools at the time, and guess at which school the glue sticks got used up first? These are definitely noticeably more expensive than other brands, but very well worth it in the long run. They have a "screw" top which I like. For some reason, kids seem to smoosh them less. Maybe because they are less smooshable.

WHITE GLUE:  Elmers.  The regular kind. Not the washable kind, the school glue kind, the clear gel kind (oh, that's the worst). Just the regular "Glue-All" kind. What I really really hate is those tapping bottles that drive me crazy when kids are doing collages. I think teachers buy them because they are tired of kids wasting glue, but it's not that hard to teach kids how to use small dots of glue. As for longevity, I always made sure to remind kids to close the stopper and wipe the glue off the tip, and then store the bottles standing up. It's that easy. The bottles will last practically forever.

SCISSORS:  I like "pointy" scissors, even for Kindergartners. They just seem to cut better. They seem more serious.  Fiskars makes a pretty nice pair of scissors for little hands, and they seem to work fine for either hand, so you don't need any special left-handed ones. 

PENCILS:  Dixon Ticonderoga. Nothing else will do. They are great for drawing. They have good, soft erasers. They sharpen well without breaking. They are worth the extra few cents per dozen. They last longer, write smoother, sharpen easier, and erase without smudging. I could write a whole blog post just about pencils. Another time. When the erasers go, as they will, I offer Pink Pearl erasers, not one for each student, but several stored near the pencil sharpener. (Which is a whole other post, but I swear by a good pencil sharpener.)

And last, but definitely not least .....  PAPER!  

I like good quality CONSTRUCTION PAPER, like Tru-Ray, because the paper is smoother and the colors are nice and bright. And by all means.... save all the scraps for collage-making!  It's a good idea to invest in some white DRAWING PAPER.  It comes in reams and is not too expensive. I like having both 9x12 and 12x18 on hand. It can be used when construction paper is not really needed but copy paper or newsprint is too thin. Regular, ordinary COPY PAPER is great for pencil drawing. It's nice and white, relatively inexpensive, and looks great on the wall in a gallery. Under no circumstances would I ever use any kind of newsprint for art lessons. Ever. Not even for sketching. It's just too ugly.

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FOR BEST RESULTS, TREAT STUDENTS LIKE ARTISTS

If you buy the best you can afford, or even go a little over your budget, it will pay in the long run. When the budget is limited (and when isn't it, but I mean seriously limited) and you're tempted to buy cheaper materials, consider buying less units and get higher quality instead. Maybe it's better to have 10 boxes of high quality crayons and have kids share, than to have 20 boxes of poor quality crayons with drab color. Maybe it's better for three students to share a good stick of UHU glue stick than to have each student have their own stick of gooey, messy substandard glue stick. Every student does not always need their own everything.

Treat students like artists, and maybe they will make great art!

Enjoy! Create!

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heart tangles

I was scheduled to do an art lesson for fifth grade yesterday and was not really sure what I wanted to do. I hemmed and hawed for a couple of days and then the night before the lesson, I couldn't sleep, and I came up with these. I call them HeartTangles.... basically just Zentangles with a heart superimposed over the design, colored in with warm or cool colored pencil.

I actually started the lesson with an incomplete sentence:  "Being Creative means...." and listened to some very wonderful ideas. I have to interject that this particular fifth grade class was fortunate to have periodic art instruction (by me) all through Kindergarten, first, and second grade. I was really tickled and blown away by their responses (see the charted responses below). Best of all, some of their ideas were a perfect segue into the Zentangles Hearts lesson.

To introduce the lesson I just put up a sheet of paper and started drawing, saying nothing. I worked very slow and meticulously, never taking my eyes off the paper, for about three to five minutes. Then I turned to the kids and asked, "What was I doing?" and again, they had great responses:  Focusing on my work. Working slowly. Making one long line. Concentrating.

It was time to hand out paper and let them begin. Suddenly, you could hear a pin drop. There was no sound at all for the longest time.

When the first person had filled the entire page, I stopped everyone and introduced the heart part. First I had them free draw many hearts on a blank piece of paper, all sizes. Then I gave directions for drawing and cutting a heart out of tagboard, tracing it on their design, and coloring it in using warm or cool colors. I put out everything they needed, and just watched them work.

This was a wonderfully relaxing day! The entire lesson/activity took just under two hours, and everybody did a great job!

pentangles

Recently I began running into these things called Zentangles every once in a while, which look suspiciously like the doodles in the margins of all my college notebooks. I began to remember how it would be easier for me to concentrate on lectures if, between note-taking, I was doodling. Just a fact of life for the visual among us.....

I started thinking that this would be fun to do as an art lesson with kids. All the Zentangles I saw were simply black on white, with lots of repetitive lines, dots, squiggles, etc, to fill up space in a seemingly random way. Would it be relaxing for kids, or would it be frustrating? How would I present it?

My idea was to introduce it with no talking. I gathered kids together.... this was a second grade.... and put up a sheet of 9x12 white paper on the wall and started with one long, sweeping, curving line. I added more lines next to it, several grouped together, then started off in another direction. I kept "adding to" with groups of dots, or little zig-zags, or whatever. Then I stopped.

"What was I doing?" I asked them, and among their responses, I started writing down some key items.... "drawing lines".... "drawing dots".... "doing the same thing again and again"... etc..... until I had some guidelines on the board next to my demonstration paper. Then I gave them directions:

Start with one long line across the paper. Make sure it goes off the edges. Add five more lines right next to it. Then, either make more of those lines or go in a new direction. Here's the rule:  You need to really, really think about what you are doing and you have to repeat each line, dot, shape, or design at least five times.

Five times.  So now I had another idea:  As students finished, I had them choose one colored pencil to color in five spaces, anywhere on the paper, all with the same color. And I renamed them Pentangles. :-)

Here's the best part:  This class is notoriously chatty. Yak yak yak all day long. During this activity, you could practically hear a pin drop! Usually during art time there is a noticeable amount of chatter, conversation, etc., but this activity just inherently seemed to turn the classroom into a whole group of little mindful people, all concentrating on their own designs.

We mounted the finished product on colored construction paper, and they are awesome!

observation drawing: people

I am not a fan of stick people. Children, I think, draw stick people because adults have taught them to do so. As a primary classroom teacher for ten years, I expected my students to always draw people with body parts, clothing, and details.

Now that I am teaching Art to young children, I have a mission to eradicate classrooms of stick people. This lesson with second graders asks them to closely look at another student and to draw a person using that student's clothing for inspiration. It is done with colored pencils on white drawing paper.

This lesson is partly a directed-draw lesson and partly an observation drawing lesson. I introduce the term "contour drawing" and define it as the outline shape of something. I have students look closely at shapes and contours in clothing, shapes of heads, arms, bodies and legs, direction of contour lines, and proportion of body parts to each other.

I talk students through the drawing of the person across from them at their table: an oval near the top of their paper for the head, the neck lines, shoulders, the shape of the shirt or blouse, short or long sleeves, pant legs or skirt and legs, then arms, fingers, and shoes. Finally, we look at different hair styles, and I emphasize that hair grows down, not up, and that it is drawn with lines, not shapes.

During the drawing process, I use my own clothes and body for reference; I do some modeling on the white board, but make sure to have them always refer to the person they are drawing for shapes, sizes, and details.

Once the contour drawing is done, I have students color in their drawing using the colors of and details on their partner's clothing. I ask students not to add faces because I want them to have time to draw another person and we will have a face drawing lesson another day. When this first drawing is finished, students then choose a different model and draw that person next to the first drawing.

This lesson ends with a reminder to students that they never need to draw stick people again, because now they know how easy it is to draw a person with a body and clothes. :-)
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