Hand Renderings: Grade 5

I am excited to say that I have been subbing for another art teacher all this week and it has been so much fun! This is especially true because I have been given free reign on many of the lessons and have been trying out some new ideas with the students!

The first one I will post about may be my favorite this week -- although it would be a tough choice since all the projects have been great in their own ways.

My Demonstration Drawing

The fifth grade students were presented with the challenge of drawing their own hands from observation only. Cue a few moans here when they were told absolutely no tracing. But after the initial and expected complaints that it was too hard to do, they buckled down and realized with focus they could achieve surprising results.

Once the hands were drawn students could choose from the following options:
1.) Draw more hands in varying poses
2.) Overlap hands
3.) Crop some of the imagery
4.) Add text (such as a name or phrase)
5.)Work collaboratively with a partner

Then with the drawings complete and gone over in permanent marker, students could add color with watercolor paints using any technique they chose. These ended up including some of the following:
1.) Paint everything one color
2.) Paint everything varying colors, no pattern
3.) Paint everything with a pattern
4.) Paint only selective areas (i.e. background or hands)
5.) Use splattering with care

This one is pretty amazing! I love the varied lettering and attention to detail.

Here are more drawings -- I think they are all rather awesome since this was the students' first experience with drawing hands without tracing and with no rough drafts!
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I envision this lesson as part one of a two part idea. In the second part, I would love to expand on the use of hands by incorporating them into a portrait drawing lesson.

Marker Fish - Grade 3

So again, I will say that the regular teacher must love ocean life! The third grade class was working on these rather large fish. They had used tracers to trace the fish onto 12 x 18 paper. Then they used those ocean life packets to add lots of details. Next they outlined it all in Sharpie. And finally they used brand new -- still very juicy -- Crayola markers to color them in. I have no idea what these will end up being used for. The example that was left was two-sided and cut out, but the instructions that I was given said not to do that, so not sure what the final project will look like. I kinda like the idea of having them be two-sided and maybe hung on fishing line so that they move with the air currents. They would be great as part of an all out coral reef installation in the school because they would look like they were swimming. Anyway, some of the color schemes and patterns look so awesome; I just had to share them!

Sneaker Contour Drawings - Grade 4

My example -- I borrowed one of  the students' sneakers to do the demonstration.

I love to teach observational drawing lessons and was excited when the regular art teacher asked me to start this lesson with the fourth grade students.

The students were asked to remove one sneaker and place it in front of them. After getting over the initial gross factor of the boys trying to sniff their sneakers to freak out the girls the drawing could begin.

At first the students thought it was too difficult to draw a sneaker. They were asked to begin on a draft paper so that they could work through the learning process before making marks on the final paper. Many wanted to just trace their sneakers and did not like when I said they had to observe and draw what they saw, not trace. They also got frustrated when they had to go back and re-evaluate what they had drawn because they weren't getting life-size sketches. I jokingly said that the shoes could not look like they fit them when they were babies. They had to be big enough to fit now, which for some students was pretty big. This lightened things up a bit and gave them the courage to try again.

I made no misrepresentations during the demo and cautioned students that this was a challenging assignment that would require concentration and focus and less talking then I would normally allow in the art room. After about ten minutes of drawing they appreciated my candid approach and really focused their efforts, making multiple attempts, calling me over to help when they got stuck on certain parts, etc. Some students created such detailed drafts that they were worried they could not reproduce the result on the final paper, so I allowed them to use the windows to trace their sketches onto the final drafts. They had no idea that this was even possible.

Now, I have no clue how these drawings will end up or what the final project will look like when it is completed. I like the idea of keeping the contour drawings with little or no color, maybe just going over them in maker. I would also like to see them finished with a border design that incorporates the crazy cool patterns that are on the bottoms of the sneakers. I'll have to keep an eye out for these in the halls the next time I am at this school so I can see what will have become of them.

Here are some of the drawings. They were all really great and I'd love to share all of them, but I'll settle for just these for now.

Drawings From Music Class -- Kindergarten, First and Second Grade

Whenever I fill in for one particular music teacher, she always asks me to do some art with the students, which I love to do. Her music room has so many great books that are about music and dance, but also have excellent, inspiring illustrations. Last week I came across three books that I really liked and had the students make drawings after hearing them read aloud. These were only half hour classes, so for many of these drawings the students only had about 10 or 15 minutes to work on them by the time the books were read and the materials were distributed.

One book was Giraffe's Can't Dance by Giles Andreae.

I read this book to the first graders and they made some great drawings of animals dancing.



Another fantastic book that I came across was Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp by Carol Diggory Shields.
I read this book to the kindergarten students and demonstrated step-by-step how to draw some instrument-playing dinosaurs. A few students even made their own dinosaurs without my help at all.


I found a third book of silly animal poems, but now I can't remember the title. If anyone knows what book I'm talking about feel free to comment since I'm really stumped. This book had black & white line drawings for illustrations. The first poem in the book was about giving a giraffe a bath. Other poems included one about toasting marshmallows with a dragon, being too late to take your doggy for a walk and he makes a puddle, a "wittle wabbit", a "see" horse who can see a girl and her daddy, etc.

Anyway, with this third poetry book I let the second grade students come up and select a poem to read to the class. They could NOT show the illustration. The students then had to decide which poems were their favorite and make their own drawings to go with them.