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  • Banner with colorful artwork promoting an art shop featuring kindness coloring pages, artist activities, and resources for teachers.

Category Archives: drawing

Contour Shoes– 3rd grade

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A large boot outlined with stick figures dancing, climbing, and parachuting around it on a white background, evoking the creativity of 3rd grade.

Contour Drawings  The students observed the details and lines on their shoes.  They completed a contour line study of their footwear.  Next, they turned these drawings into “miniature playgrounds” for stick people.  Contour drawing helps define and explore edges through line and locates one object in relationship to another. It also establishes an expressive and accurate representation of the subject by the richness of the lines, thick or thin, crisp or soft, and the speed and rhythm with which they … Read more… →

Greek Vase Drawings- 4th/5th grade

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Drawing of seven Greek vases on a green surface, displaying various shapes and decorative patterns, ideal for 4th-grade or 5th-grade students studying ancient art.

@font-face { font-family: “Cambria”; }@font-face { font-family: “Adobe Caslon Pro”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Greek Vase Drawing & Model:  First, the 4/5s read a magazine about Greek vases. Then they made a small vase using modeling clay.  Next, they used chalk to develop a drawing of Greek vases using Greek imagery and symbols. Black sharpie markers were used to draw the designs.

Figure Drawing like Keith Haring

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A colorful child drawing showcases two figures, one red circling a green, reminiscent of Keith Haring's style. Vibrant geometric shapes enliven the background.

  These are drawings by 4th/5th graders.  Who was Keith Haring?  What is gesture drawing?  The 4/5s learned about the artwork of Keith Haring and practiced figural drawing.  In pairs, the students posed for each other and practiced gesture drawing and longer posed drawings.  Then they drew stylized people, kind of in a cartoon-like way.  We read pages from this book about Keith Haring and analyzed the meanings of his artwork.  The kids were encouraged to add their own symbols … Read more… →

3rd/4th grade Non-objective drawings

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A chaotic abstract pencil drawing featuring swirls, shapes, and various irregular forms on a white background, embodying the spontaneity of non-objective drawings.

The students learned how to identify realistic, abstract and non-objective art.  The 3/4s worked on a non-objective graphite drawing.  Using only shapes, lines, texture and value the students drew an interesting non-objective design.  Non-objective art is art that has no recognizable objects.  Value in art is the degree of lightness or darkness.  The students completed a value scale using pencil.  They learned how to create contrast by placing dark shades next to light shades, rough texture next to smooth texture … Read more… →

Mondrian Trees

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A painting of a bare tree with swirling branches against a blue-toned, textured background.

  Trees in the Style of Piet Mondrian-–The 4th/5th graders drew trees to complement their studies in Science class.  How can line be used creatively to make a stylized picture?  How can we capture a mood using color?  How can oil pastels be used effectively?  These are the questions we will explore during this unit.  Theyhad a color mixing and blending review.  They learned to use line creatively and made stylized art.  Piet Mondrian’s abstract trees were viewed:

Primary Self-Portraits and Machinery Drawings

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A pencil sketch of gears

I started out the year with the Primary students (1st grade) drawing small, quick self portraits. One kid drew himself as a pirate! lol. The 4/5s (4th/5th graders mixed) looked at gears and drew them from observation.  I also had pictures of gears and machinery for them to look at.  I showed them basic steps to add shading and value.  After they had drawn 3+ gears, I told them that we would be turning them into inventions.  We had things … Read more… →

Really Cool Drawing Site

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Cool drawing of a bird with simple lines and wispy feathers against a white background.

While reading Mini Matisse’s Blog I learned about this really cool online drawing program that allows you to draw with different types of marks:  fur, webbed, squares, ribbon, sketchy and others.  I’m in love with how it looks!  I have an idea to draw using this program, then print them out, add color with paints or colored pencils and then incorporate them into a mixed media collage. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it appears once … Read more… →

Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists

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Drawing of a blue bird with a single visible eye, beak, and part of a wing on a postcard background created by mixed media artists.

I purchased Carla Sonheim’s drawing book, because I’m always interested in looking at new drawing books or new mixed media art books and this is a combination of both.  She has a lot of drawing exercises on her blog also.  As an art teacher who avidly researches all sorts of art lesson plans, I have seen some of these drawing exercises before, but Carla puts her own unique spin on everything.  I really like how the book is laid out, … Read more… →

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