Module 4: Creativity through the Arts
Developing Creative Confidence and Skills
The story of One Health is shared through the arts from community to community in order to have a broader understanding and appreciation for the connection of all living things. Through our art explorations, we can express our enhanced sense of the balance between the uniqueness of each of us and the commonality of the entire ecosystem.
Module 4 - Creativity through the Arts: Developing Creative Confidence and Skills
Theme 1: Getting Acquainted
Big Idea
Module 4 is a compilation of activities that introduces art materials, techniques, and the study of art as a visual language. Each activity encourages an exploration of media within given parameters and then a follow up of questions as to how this connects the student to one’s larger community and environment. This invitation is offered to use expressive ideas in the sequence you choose, adapt to age-appropriate activities, and edit for your community.
Overview
The overall theme of Module 4 is focused on using The Arts as a persuasive medium to encourage members of the community to make positive choices in order to safeguard and protect all living things.
Design is the plan for your art. To create a design, we have a “toolbox” with which we can create the arrangement of the art. DESIGN can be a noun – the look of how the parts were put together. Or DESIGN can be a verb – the action of planning and doing the art. The following lessons in Theme 2 will be introductions to the Elements and Principles of Design. Just as letters make up words and words make up sentences that we speak, these elements and principles make up the language of art.
Lesson Supports
Artifacts of Learning
Plan
Notes
Welcome to Module 4
What are some of the core values that you have been following with your family at home? With your friends at school? Let’s continue with these as we begin our art lessons.
Preparing for work and arranging our workspace Mind and body relaxation
- Find space between you and your classmates.
- Straighten your spine to a neutral position.
- Uncrossed legs.
- Jaws are relaxed.
- Reaching your arms high to the ceiling and back down.
- Rolling our wrists.
- Rolling our shoulders backward, forward.
- Head rolls to the left, passing down chin to chest, and then to the right.
- We breathe in and out about 20,000 times a day!
- When we concentrate on our breath, we are present.
- Close your eyes.
- Breathe in through your nose for 5 seconds, hold, breathe out through your mouth for 5 seconds, hold, repeat until the entire classroom is breathing together. Feel positive energy.
- Does a volunteer want to lead the counting?
- Please feel free to begin this exercise again tomorrow.
- You can do this quietly on your own as you begin your work.
Materials: core values banner, calming music for breathing exercises
Distribute art kits
- Go through materials quickly and discuss methods of keeping kits until the end of the program.
- Sketchbooks – children are free to write notes, draw, etc.
- Practice respect and honesty – do not disturb other kits. Do not take things from other kits.
- Be responsible – put your materials back in the kit and create the habit of picking the kit at the beginning of class and putting it away after class.
Suggested art kit materials: sketchbook, drawing and colored pencils, sharpener, markers (thin and thick tips), oil pastels, watercolor set, palette, an assortment of brushes, water cup, paint rag, scissors, glue.
Additional classroom materials: drawing boards, chalkboard, colored chalk, and erasure/rag
Getting familiar with materials
- Open your sketchbook to the first clean and blank page.
- Take out your markers and study the colors you have.
- What colors do you love?
- Which colors are you least apt to choose?
- Choose one to write your name BIG on page one.
- Notice how you hold your marker.
- Which hand do you use?
- Notice how you made a collection of lines.
- Pick up a second marker and add to your name – thicker lines and thinner lines, overlapping lines or outline of the original line, patterned/textured lines or smooth lines.
- This is your name.
- How is your name similar to your neighbor’s?
- How is your name different from your neighbor’s?
- How is that like all of us who are similar and different?
- If the group does not know each other, use this as an opportunity for each to share his/her name with the group.
- Introduce other art materials in the kit and on another page in your sketchbook play with the colored pencils trying a variety of approaches.
- Drawing with eyes closed (or blindfolded).
- Drawing with your non-dominate hand.
- Coloring in a solid space and then overlapping colors.
- Playing with possibilities.
- Notice how we are expanding our possibilities.
- Is it easier when you have tight restrictions, some loose suggestions, or when there are no plans suggested at all?
5. Oil pastels, watercolor, or other materials may be saved for special “how to’s” later or if students have used them in the past, they could have time to re-familiarize themselves with the capabilities of the media.
Suggestions: sketchbook, blindfold, art kit materials
Creating a portfolio or envelope to hold your work
The mesh art kit bag containing the art materials or a large envelope used for this art activity can serve as a portfolio. The portfolio will eventually hold all the student work and will be given to each student at the end of the course. (See Module 5 for end of the program activities)
- Give each student an envelope to use as a portfolio.
- If large envelopes are not available use large sheets of paper.
- Fold in half and fold in from the two sides.
- Fold up from the bottom.
- You will have a ‘pocket’ of 2 inches or more.
- Staple or tape the corners to hold work.
- Discuss proper holding of scissors and safety use of scissors.
- Choose any of the colors of construction paper you would like to cut shapes from.
- Show examples of Henri Matisse’s cut-outs and the series as inspiration for this exercise.
- Cut free-form shapes out of colored construction paper.
- Cut several free-form shapes from different colors of construction paper.
- No need to draw the shapes first.
- Hold a sheet of paper with one hand and start cutting.
- Keep turning your paper as you are cutting until you have made an interesting shape.
- Arrange and rearrange the cut-out shapes.
- Glue the cut-outs to the surface of the portfolio.
- Discuss the gluing application so the cut-outs will stay adhered to the paper but not be messy.
- Write your name on the outside of the portfolio.
Materials: large paper envelope, large sheets of paper, stapler, tape, scissors, colored construction paper, glue, examples of Henri Matisse’s cut-out collages, pre-made sample for students to look at.
Think about… How you chose to put this together is your own design. Just as each day we have some freedom of choice, we also have some boundaries we must pay attention to. What were your boundaries on this portfolio? What were your choices?
Suggested materials
Everyday Tool Bag: name tags and basket or bag, attendance sheet, chalk, erasure or rag, art supplies, pencils, glue, scissors, hammer, nails, tape, string, music player and speakers, etc.
For Module 4: Elements & Principles of Art poster, art kits with materials (mesh bag with a zipper works well), sketchbook, drawing and colored pencils, sharpener, markers (thick and thin tips), oil pastels, watercolor set, palette, an assortment of brushes, water cup, paint rag, scissors, glue, art smocks
Theme 1: Getting Acquainted – large paper envelopes for each student, large sheets of paper for making our own portfolio, examples of Henri Matisse’s cut-out collages, completed examples to show, stapler/tape/glue, colored construction paper
Module 4 - Creativity through the Arts: Developing Creative Confidence and Skills
Theme 2: Lesson 1 - How the Elements & Principles of Design make the Visual Language of Art
Big Idea
Module 4 is a compilation of activities that introduces art materials, techniques, and the study of art as a visual language. Each activity encourages an exploration of media within given parameters and then a follow up of questions as to how this connects the student to one’s larger community and environment. This invitation is offered to use expressive ideas in the sequence you choose, adapt to age-appropriate activities, and edit for your community.
Overview
By the end of this lesson students will:
- Knowledge: Be introduced to the Elements and Principles of Design as “tools” of composition. These make up the language of art.
- Understanding: Students will be aware that there is much to understand about each of these. They will apply the information given in a series of lessons.
- Skills: A variety of media will be practiced in this collection of lessons.
- Attitudes and Values: Each student will gain a respect for the creative process and an interest in exploring the use of the materials.
Lesson Supports
Artifacts of Learning
Plan
Notes
Review and Making Connections
- Did you remember to pick up your art kits and materials?
- Were you respectful of others?
- How do we arrange our workspace?
- Who would like to lead us in a breathing exercise? Or a song?
Materials: core values banner, art kits
Hook: Let’s go on a visual safari!
- Get out all of your markers and colored chalk.
- With volunteers at the chalkboard, on your working surface with a large sheet of paper, and at an open double page in your sketchbook let’s take a journey with art.
- We are going to respond to prompts I give to you IN YOUR OWN WAY.
- There is NO ONE RIGHT ANSWER as to how it all fits together.
- All that you do will be your choice!
Materials: chalkboard & chalk, markers, large sheet of paper and/or sketchbook
Activity 1: Lines
- Let’s have 3 or 4 volunteers at the chalkboard.
- Pick up a piece of chalk, any color.
- Play with how the chalk feels.
- Draw a straight line. Is it a thin line? Can you make it thicker?
- Draw a circle. Does the circle take up a lot of space? Is it small? Does it touch your classmate’s circle?
- Now make a wavy line. You may change colors or use the same one over and over. Are they short or really long lines? Or a variety of short to medium to long lines?
- Draw an angle. Is it a sharp angle?
- Draw another circle and this time color in the center to make it a dot.
- Can you make more and more lines? Why not move to the other side of your classmates to a new area on the chalkboard?
- Work as a team. Try to fill in the entire chalkboard with all kinds of scribbles.
- Are you working faster? Bigger?
- Do you feel free?
- Let’s have another group of volunteers. Can this group fill in the entire space faster than the team before? Remember, work as a team!
Suggestions: volunteers at the chalkboard, lots of colored chalk
Activity 2: Application of the Elements
- Pick up a marker/piece of chalk, any COLOR, and make a mark that runs from one side of your paper or a pre-drawn square on the chalkboard to the other.
- What can you say about that mark? Straight or curved, solid or broken, thick or thin? This is called a LINE.
- Now make a second line from one edge to another. You may change colors or use the same one over and over.
- Let’s add SHAPES. Everyone make a big circle in the air with your hand. Somewhere on the paper/chalkboard make a circle. Fill it in with color if you want – light or dark. VALUE is the lightness or the darkness of a color.
- Draw a triangle in the air. Now draw a triangle somewhere and let it overlap another shape.
- Let’s do an air square, a rectangle. What is the difference? Look at the whole SPACE you have.
- Draw three squares or rectangles on your paper/chalkboard any size, any place. They can overlap lines or not. Where would you like to add a line or shape on your paper/chalkboard?
- Now for a few minutes, using any colors you choose, go back over some of the lines you have already made, maybe make them thicker in some places and thinner in others. Let dotted or dashed lines run along beside or on top of some lines. Can you make some lines very smooth and others rough, a change of TEXTURE?
Suggestions: volunteers at the chalkboard.
Materials: a large sheet of paper, sketchbook, markers
Assessment and Follow Up
- Now let’s look at our Elements and Principles of Design poster and what we have done on our papers and at the chalkboard.
- Have you used the space of the two pages in a pleasing way? Does the paper have BALANCE or does it look heavier in one place or another? Do you want to add something to make it feel more balanced?
- Is there one place you would like to emphasize more? Can you make it darker or maybe a contrasting color? This might serve as a FOCAL POINT
- How have you achieved some UNITY is this design?
- And how have you made it interesting by adding VARIETY?
- As you look at your art, does your eye jump around or does it move smoothly throughout the two pages? REPETITION of color or shape can help RHYTHM throughout the design.
- Note that today you have been making marks, not yet trying to achieve a realistic picture.
- Going forward we will focus on these – sometimes one at a time, sometimes combining several of these to build a strong composition.
- Plus, we will discover how we can tell stories and make statements with our art – aiming to support the connections between people, animals, and the environment through art activities.
- If you were to give this piece a name, what might it be?
- Do you see now why you were told there would not be one right answer?
- Keep that in mind as it will usually be true with your art. or chalkboard.
Materials: Elements and Principles of Art poster
Module 4 - Creativity through the Arts: Developing Creative Confidence and Skills
Theme 2: Design Lesson 2 - Introduction to Line
Big Idea
Module 4 is a compilation of activities that introduces art materials, techniques, and the study of art as a visual language. Each activity encourages an exploration of media within given parameters and then a follow up of questions as to how this connects the student to one’s larger community and environment. This invitation is offered to use expressive ideas in the sequence you choose, adapt to age-appropriate activities, and edit for your community.
Overview
Design is the plan for your art. To create a design, we have a “tool box” with which we can create the arrangement of the art. DESIGN can be a noun – the look of how the parts were put together. Or DESIGN can be a verb – the action of planning and doing the art. The following lessons will be introductions to the Elements and Principles of Design. Just as letters make up words and words make up sentences that we speak, these elements and principles make up the language of art.
By the end of this lesson, students will:
- Observation: of edges of natural and human-made objects.
- Understand: how a line can define these objects and embellish the detail.
- Apply: a variety of line quality to contour drawing.
Lesson Supports
Artifacts of Learning
Plan
Notes
Review and Making Connections
In the air with your hand, at the chalkboard, and in your sketchbook, let’s create some lines.
- straight lines (a line with no bend) draw straight lines with at least 3 different drawing tools. Explore the length and strength of the lines.
Next try…
- curved lines (a line with any degree of bending)
- angular (a line that bends so much it comes to a point) try a zigzag
- horizontal
- vertical
- diagonal
- broken lines – try dotted and dashed broken lines
- contour
- decorative
- your choice – a mixture of lines and different drawing tools
Materials: sketchbook, drawing materials
Demonstration: Blind contour line
- At the chalkboard do a blind contour drawing for the kids to see the process.
- Draw very slowly as you look at the object, not at the chalkboard or paper.
- Pretend the tip of the chalk has a magnet holding it to the board.
- The human figure is a good subject or part of the human figure like a hand.
- Expect serious distortions.
Materials: chalk, model
Activity 1: Blind contour line drawing
Pretend the tip of the marker has a magnet holding it to the paper. It can move any direction on the paper, but it cannot lift up off of the paper so it is one continuous line.
Choose a subject to draw.
- Students or the teacher/facilitator can be a model.
- Everyone needs to be able to see the models well.
- Natural objects such as botanicals could be subject.
Very slowly study the outline of the object and not looking at the paper, just looking at the object draw edges very, very slowly creating details. Always with your marker in one continuous line. Your mark on paper is where your eye is on the object.
Quick Assessment:
- Does your drawing have lots of distortion? It will if you did not peek! For your next blind contour drawing, you might try with maybe 3 peeks.
- Could you do this kind of drawing looking at your feet? Looking at your face in a mirror? At objects in nature?
- What is contour line? Does contour line help define the outline of a form?
Please note: Theme 4: Figures & Portraits is a continuation of drawing from models.
Materials: sketchbook or large piece of paper, wide tipped marker, objects and/or volunteers to be the model
Activity 2: Drawing recognizable objects
We have the option to draw from a display of objects that are easily recognizable and/or a worksheet.
The recognizable objects are made up of a variety of lines. The same lines we have been studying. Really look at the object! Unlike the blind contour drawing exercise when we looked only at the object or model and not at the paper, in this exercise you can look back and forth from the object to the space where you are drawing.
Materials: recognizable objects, worksheet, pencils
Assessment and Follow Up
- Did you find yourself looking really hard at the objects? Drawing is about REALLY seeing. The only way to learn to draw is to draw!
- How do you define the word contour?
- Are you naming the type of line when you are copying the pineapple? There are many curves, diagonal lines, angles, etc.
- Do you feel more confident in our drawing skills? Is it because we are getting better at really looking? Really opening our eyes to the world around us?
Module 4 - Creativity through the Arts: Developing Creative Confidence and Skills
Theme 2: Design Lesson 3 - Introduction to Shape and Form
Big Idea
Module 4 is a compilation of activities that introduces art materials, techniques, and the study of art as a visual language. Each activity encourages an exploration of media within given parameters and then a follow up of questions as to how this connects the student to one’s larger community and environment. This invitation is offered to use expressive ideas in the sequence you choose, adapt to age-appropriate activities, and edit for your community.
Overview
The overall theme of Module 4 is focused on using The Arts as a persuasive medium to encourage members of the community to make positive choices in order to safeguard and protect all living things.
By the end of this lesson students will:
- Understand: the characteristics of shape as an element of art.
- Create: a variety of art activities that incorporate characteristics of shape with different media, using oil pastel or colored tissue paper.
- Search: for shapes commonly found in nature.
- Define: 2D shapes vs 3D shapes.
- Build a vocabulary: to use when talking about shape.
Lesson Supports
Artifacts of Learning
Plan
Notes
Review and Making Connections
As a group, ask volunteers to point to and say all of the shapes on a poster, or chalkboard, or looking outside the window.
Do all of the lines you are listing make up a realistic object, like a tree or a car wheel, or is it an organic shape such as rows in the field or curves of volcanoes?
Hook: Introducing 2D and 3D shapes and forms
In your sketchbook, see if you can draw the following shapes and forms:
- square
- cube
- rectangle
- circle
- sphere
- triangle
- pyramid
- free form (amoebic or cloud-like) shape
What is the difference between geometric shapes and organic ones?
I am guessing some of these shapes are hard to draw, so let’s begin to become familiar with a variety of them.
Materials: sketchbook
Activity 1: Form
Display some actual forms – a ball, a shoebox, a cube, a cylindrical can, a cone
- Now we will study ‘form.’
- Shape is a two-dimensional, 2D, closed figure.
- Form is three-dimensional, 3D.
- Form has “thickness” and “depth.”
- If you can pick something up, or if it casts a shadow, it is a form.
- One of the differences between a shape and a form is that a form can bear weight.
- Draw a circle on the board.
- A circle is flat.
- What do we call a round object I can pick up?
- It’s a ball or sphere.
- Hold a ball up.
- Repeat this process many times.
- Draw a square on the board.
- Ask what we call a 3-dimensional object with square sides.
- Write ‘cube’ next to the square figure.
- Hold up a cube.
- Continue with cones, pyramids, etc.
- With organic forms too, such as people or trees, and irregular forms like airplanes or cars.
- A worksheet of complex shapes and three-dimensional forms can be used to practice these new concepts.
Materials: sample forms (ball, box, cube, cylindrical can, cone), pencils, worksheets
Activity 2: Shadows and adding shading to an object
Shadows happen when light is blocked by an object.
- What information do shadows tell us?
- what time of day it is
- the shape and size of an object
Worksheets: Let’s think about the light source – a flashlight or the sun – and add the shadows.
Materials: sample forms (ball, box, cube, cylindrical can, cone), flashlight, worksheets
Activity 3: Make a 3-dimensional form
Cut out pre-made cube art or make your own. With your own cube art, decorate it.
This activity can be done in Module 3 when studying animals and their characteristics. Students can decorate their cubes with a variety of plants and animals and even a self-portrait.
Make a small hole and attach a string so the boxes can hang in the classroom or at home.
Or arrange the cubes in a pyramid representing the trophic levels learned in Module 3: Lesson 4 Food Chains.
Or create a totem.
Materials: pre-made cube art, scissors, (with the help from adults – cut slits and tabs with a type of straight edge), glue, tape
Activity 4: Gorilla outline drawing with colored tissue paper
- Can you draw your own bipedal (walking on two legs) female mountain gorilla? Use large shapes. Draw lightly with your pencil.
- Now you have the shape of your gorilla. Instead of using our markers or paints, let’s use colored tissue paper to fill in the spaces.
- Start by ripping tissue paper into small pieces. No need to use scissors.
- Brush glue onto an area of your paper. Place bits of tissue paper down flat onto the glue. Brush over them with a thin layer of glue.
- Glue light-colored tissue first and then add darker colors to prevent colors from running.
- Avoid colors running by not brushing over the same area too much.
- Using different sizes and different shapes of the tissue paper. Glue pieces down flat or with a few crinkles.
- Experiment with pasting spots of different colors side by side to create a shimmering look.
- Create new colors by gluing tissue paper pieces on top of one another. Green over blue will give you a bluish-green. Green over blue will give you a bluish-green.
- How does your gorilla look? Is she realistic? Abstract? Funny? Serious?
- Have you added trees and other things?
Note: an outline of any animal or organic shape works with this activity.
Materials: finished samples to show students, chalkboard and for chalk, Bristol paper, pencil, colored tissue paper, glue, brushes for the glue
To thin the glue, add water to it.
Assessment and Follow Up
- What have you discovered about shape?
- Anything new?
- As you are walking today pay attention to the many shapes around you.
Module 4 - Creativity through the Arts: Developing Creative Confidence and Skills
Theme 2: Design Lesson 4 - Introduction to Color
Big Idea
Module 4 is a compilation of activities that introduces art materials, techniques, and the study of art as a visual language. Each activity encourages an exploration of media within given parameters and then a follow up of questions as to how this connects the student to one’s larger community and environment. This invitation is offered to use expressive ideas in the sequence you choose, adapt to age-appropriate activities, and edit for your community.
Overview
The overall theme of Module 4 is focused on using The Arts as a persuasive medium to encourage members of the community to make positive choices in order to safeguard and protect all living things.
Design is the plan for your art. To create a design, we have a “tool box” with which we can create the arrangement of the art. DESIGN can be a noun – the look of how the parts were put together. Or DESIGN can be a verb – the action of planning and doing the art. The following lessons will be introductions to the Elements and Principles of Design. Just as letters make up words and words make up sentences that we speak, these elements and principles make up the language of art.
By the end of this lesson students will:
- Understand: the characteristics of color as an element of art.
- Practice: using color in your own art with a variety of media including mixing secondary colors with watercolors.
- Apply: color theory to enhance the One Health lessons.
Lesson Supports
Artifacts of Learning
Kids' Art
Plan
Notes
Review and Making Connections
Do you like practicing really looking at the world around you? Do you notice new things every day? How about seeing lines in nature? Just as our personal hygiene habits take time to form, so does our effort to looking at the world in new and exciting ways. Keep on practicing.
Associations and Reactions
Feeling Color Display a variety of solid-colored objects.
- How do the colors make you feel?
- Every day we walk around and see many colors, but have you ever stopped and asked yourself how does that particular color make you feel?
- Each person arrives at their own emotion. Your emotion may be different from your friend.
- How one of our favorite colors is next to another color, what happens?
What thoughts, memories, emotions occur when thinking of…
- the yellow of the sun?
- the blue in the sky?
- the white of the clouds?
- the green of a leaf?
- the red of the brick on the house?
- the black fur of a dog?
fire, hot, warm, sad, sun, warmth, hot, fire, bricks, rock, smooth, rough, ocean, sky, wet, warm, cold, darkness, warmth, coldness, happy, young-old, bright-dull, early-late, active-passive
As a group discussion or on worksheets – How do these colors make you feel?
- Express your feelings. Write or draw your response.
- Ask your classmate how she/he feels.
Preparations and materials: display a variety of objects of solid color. For example, a red piece of paper, a red rose, a red ball of yarn, a red t-shirt, etc. Do the same for other colors. Feeling Color worksheets.
Hook: Have a diagnostic test about color to see what our students know.
What happens to color when you put your hands over your eyes and block out all of the light? Color is a quality of light. Without light, we will not see color.
What are the Primary and Secondary Colors? A guided discussion and exercise.
Prepare for work. Students should have their paintbrushes, cups of clean water, painting rags, painting smocks (optional), watercolors and palette. An option is to prepare palettes with red, blue, and yellow using tempra or gouache paints before the lesson begins and then place on workspaces. This exercise can be done in sketchbooks, on a large piece of paper, or premade worksheets.
Looking at the color wheel, let’s to show where red is located, where yellow is located, and where blue is.
What are the three primary colors?
- red
- yellow
- blue
Each primary color is a pure color that is not created by mixing other colors together. Primary means ‘first.’
Students paint the primary colors on their color wheel.
This is a good time to talk about taking care of our ‘tools’ and helpful hints:
- Introduce the different types of paint we will be using for example, tempera, gouache, watercolors.
- Protect the bristles of your brush by not leaving it in water for extended periods of time.
- Wash off the paint from your brush in the water and then with a rag or towel. Make sure you move in the direction of the bristles.
- Mix darker colors into lighter colors. (Start with a tiny amount of the dark color. It’s easy to add more.)
- Use plenty of water.
- Don’t go over and over repeating small strokes. Paper is thin.
- Enjoy being free with your brush strokes.
Secondary colors: If you mix the following what do you get?
- red + yellow = ?
- red + blue = ?
- yellow + red = ?
Secondary colors are created by mixing two primary colors together.
Students mix colors and paint on their color wheel.
Materials: color wheels, classroom banner, sketchbook/worksheets/paper with a surface for paint, painting smocks
Types of paint: tempera, gouache, or watercolor. When using tempera or gouache, for red, it’s best to use magenta. For blue, use turquoise.
Activity: Experimenting with watercolor and brush strokes
On large sheets of watercolor paper on the tables, students experiment with watercolors and brushes.
We drew lines, circles, dots, dashed/dotted, angles, wavy lines with chalk and markers. Now let’s experiment with similar lines using paintbrushes and watercolors.
- Experiment holding your brush at different angles
- Paint thin lines by lightly with a light brush stroke
- With more water on your brush, paint the same light brush stroke
- How about a thicker line with more paint on your brush and pressing down on the brush at a different angle?
Materials: watercolors, brushes, worksheets and watercolor paper, cups of water, rags or towels
Activity: Blending colors
Again, with large sheets of watercolor paper on the tables and worksheets.
Try blending different colors together to see how they mix!
Remember what we learned by looking at the color wheel. Look where the two colors you are blending are located on the color wheel.
Let’s make intermediate colors. Intermediate colors are made by mixing primary colors with secondary colors. (Yellow and orange. Red and orange. Red and purple. Blue and purple. Blue and green. Yellow and green.)
Materials: same as above.
Activity: Complementary colors
Look again at the color wheel. If you point your finger at yellow and then move it directly opposite of yellow, what color do you find? Purple (a secondary color). Complementary colors are across from each other on the color wheel. (yellow/purple, orange/blue, red-violet/yellow-green)
Option 1: Like our Matisse paper-cut out exercise (see Theme 1-Getting Acquainted) cut and glue shapes of complementary colors to make a striking abstract design.
Option 2: Complementary colored paper weavings
Talk with students about weavings in a variety of cultures. Show pictures/samples if available. How and who created the weavings and what materials did they use?
1. Construction paper: Choose one primary color and the secondary color that is its complement.
2. On one of your papers with the ruler and pencil draw a 1-inch line in from each edge which leaves you with a 7 x 10-inch rectangle.
3. Now setting your paper horizontally in front of you, on the side, the 7-inch line, mark a dot every ½ inch on both ends.
And then using the ruler and your pencil draw the lines horizontally on your paper. The ends will stop at the margin line you drew.
4. Fold the paper in half carefully with the pencil lines on the outside. If you put one corner to the other very carefully you will fold evenly.
5. With your scissors. Cut along your lines carefully being sure to stop when you get to the margin line you created.
6. Open your paper. This will be the warp and you will weave strips of other colored paper into it.
7. Take your other piece of paper and either measure first and then cut all of these strips straight all the way across the paper so you have a collection of 9 inches. Or cut slightly irregular strips so finished pieces have varied looks.
8. After you have your strips cut, weave them in every other one over and under the warp. When all are in, put a spot of glue on both ends of each strip on the backside. Make the side with pencil lines on it the backside. Adjust the number of strips used and the number of cuts used so all ends are on the back to glue down.
Activity Consolidation: Knowing that weaving is a process of interacting one part with another part in a repetitive way, think about how do you weave in and out of interacting with your classmates? Your family? Nature? Do you see how we all depend on each other in some manner?
Materials: primary and secondary colored construction paper, ruler, pencils, scissors, examples for students to see
Assessment and Follow Up
- What did you discover in doing these exercises?
- Quiz the class orally again, and see if they remember this information.
- What did you discover in mixing the colors?
- What do you notice about your colors when you put them side by side?
- The focus was on color theory, but what did you discover about watercolor painting?
Module 4 - Creativity through the Arts: Developing Creative Confidence and Skills
Theme 2: Design Lesson 5 - More Color
Big Idea
Module 4 is a compilation of activities that introduces art materials, techniques, and the study of art as a visual language. Each activity encourages an exploration of media within given parameters and then a follow up of questions as to how this connects the student to one’s larger community and environment. This invitation is offered to use expressive ideas in the sequence you choose, adapt to age-appropriate activities, and edit for your community.
Overview
The overall theme of Module 4 is focused on using The Arts as a persuasive medium to encourage members of the community to make positive choices in order to safeguard and protect all living things.
Design is the plan for your art. To create a design, we have a “tool box” with which we can create the arrangement of the art. DESIGN can be a noun – the look of how the parts were put together. Or DESIGN can be a verb – the action of planning and doing the art. The following lessons will be introductions to the Elements and Principles of Design. Just as letters make up words and words make up sentences that we speak, these elements and principles make up the language of art.
Lesson Supports
Artifacts of Learning
Kids' Art
Plan
Notes
Review and Making Connections
- What have you discovered about color?
- When you walk home tonight what colors do you expect do you see in nature?
- What colors did you see when you came to school this morning?
Discussion and Activities: VALUE, TINT, SHADE
What is the VALUE of a color?
- Value is the degree of lightness or darkness.
- The darkest value is pure black.
- The lightest value is pure white.
- When you use black and white next to each other, you see the greatest degree of contrast possible.
- When you mix black and white together in different proportions, you create different values of greys, ranging from a very soft, pale grey to a dark steel grey.
- To achieve a darker value of a color, you mix in some black.
Grey Scale Cards: Give students a stack of laminated cards. Ask them to arrange and rearrange going from light to dark or vice versa.
How do we get a tint? A shade?
On worksheets or in your sketchbook, practice mixing colors to create scales of shades and tints.
SHADES: The more black you add, the darker the value. The darker colors are called shades.
TINTS: To create lighter values, you add white.
Types of paint: tempra, gouache, or watercolor. When using tempra or gouache, for red, it’s best to use magenta. For blue, use turquoise.
Materials: Color Wheel and Color is Life! banners, worksheets, grey scale laminated color cards, tempra, gouache, or acrylic paints; black, white, and other colors paints, plastic cups for water, water, rags, palettes, color wheel, laminated color cards
More Discussion and Activities: INTENSITY, COOL AND WARM COLORS
What is the INTENSITY of a color? How can we change the intensity of a color? Which are considered cool colors? Which are considered warm colors?
- Pass out leaf cut-outs.
- Position the leaves on your grid paper and trace them with a pencil around them.
- Use a black marker and re-trace around the outlined leaf shapes.
- Use watercolors to color the leaf shapes with cool colors ranging from yellow-green to purple
- Color the remaining shapes (outside of the outlined leaf shapes) with warm colors ranging from yellow to red-purple for the background.
Materials: leaf cut-outs, grid paper, pencil, black marker, watercolors, brushes, clean water in a container, paint rag
Activity: What is monochromatic?
Let’s create a monochromatic butterfly by using one color or a variation of it. Students will follow many steps in this activity. Pre-made samples of each step can be helpful for students to see.
- With one piece of paper, fold it in half. Draw half of a butterfly shape that is large enough to almost fill the paper and beginning on the fold.
- Your butterfly can have a top wing and a bottom wing.
- Cut out the shape and then open the paper. The butterfly will have four wings.
- Trace around your butterfly shape onto the piece of watercolor paper.
- Then draw the butterfly’s body in the center and add a head.
- Draw 3 lines to divide the top wing into 4 sections.
- Make similar lines on the matching wing.
- Make 2 lines on the bottom wing to divide the wing into 3 sections.
- Make similar lines on the matching wing.
- Draw over all your pencil lines with a black permanent marker.
- Cut out your butterfly.
- Paint matching areas on either the top or the bottom wings of your butterfly with a primary or secondary color.
- TINTS On the palette, mix a small amount of the color into a puddle of white paint.
Paint 1 area on each matching wing with this color.
Mix a little more color into that light tint to make a darker tint.
Paint 2 matching areas with this mixture.
Add more color to make an even darker tint.
Paint 2 matching areas with this mixture. - SHADES Now paint 3 matching areas with darker shades of your color.
Add a very small amount of black to a puddle of your original color.
Paint a section.
Make 2 darker shades by adding a tiny amount of black paint each time, and paint 2 areas with those mixtures. - TONES Make a tone by mixing your original color with small amounts of both black and white. Paint the body of your butterfly with this mixture.
Materials: 1 piece of white copy paper per student and one sheet of watercolor paper per student, pencil, scissors, palettes with black, a primary or secondary color, and white
Experimenting with Watercolors: Wet-on-Dry Painting
Put large watercolor sheets on the tables for students to share and paint on.
- We are using WET paint on top of DRY paper.
- Let each color dry before you paint another color next to it.
- That way, colors won’t run together and the edges will remain.
- Paint the lightest colors first.
- Dark colors can go over the light ones after they dried.
- Keep areas that you want to stay white unpainted.
- Practice on a large sheet of watercolor paper.
- Students can use this example of a snake in a tree by drawing with a pencil in the space above and then adding watercolor.
Materials: large sheets of watercolor paper, worksheets, watercolors, palette, water cup with water, towel, paint brushes
Experimenting with Watercolors: Wet-on-Wet Painting
- Make a wash. Use your brush to “paint” your paper with clean water.
- Then wet your brush with color and paint on the wet paper.
- Add another color to the wet paper.
- See how the paint spreads and blends together?
- Finish your painting quickly, before the paper dries!
- Students can replicate the examples from the worksheet or create their own.
Materials: large sheets of watercolor paper, worksheets, watercolors, palette, water cup with water, towel, paint brushes
Experimenting with Watercolors: Color washes and landscapes
Students can paint with their classmates on watercolor sheets on the tables and on pre-made worksheets.
- You can use wet-on-wet or wet-on-dry painting.
- Explore with both techniques. There is no right or wrong way.
- Paint your background first.
- Use a color wash to create a smooth background.
- Objects in the distance are in the background.
- Background objects can be lighter and with less detail.
- Objects you see close to you are in the foreground.
- Paint foreground objects in darker colors with more detail.
Materials: large sheets of watercolor paper, worksheets, watercolors, palette, water cup with water, towel, paint brushes
Experimenting with Watercolors: Movement
Put large watercolor sheets on the tables for students to share and paint on.
Motion and direction.
- Let’s make a composition with oil pastels using curvy lines going in one direction.
- Choose a different color and go in the other direction.
- How would you represent the wind?
- We can add colored tissue paper and other materials to create movement.
Materials: worksheets, colored tissue paper, glue, large sheets of watercolor paper, scraps of watercolor paper/pastel paper, water cups, rags, painting smocks
Activity: A small accordion book with the varieties of watercolor techniques
Show students a couple of examples of watercolor paintings, one which has been done with a very dry paper and dry brush technique, one done wet on wet. Ask them if they can figure out why these two paintings look so different.
Give students 1 long narrow piece (4.5″ x 28″ works well) of watercolor paper plus 1 small separate piece to practice on.
Take your paper and fold it in half on the long edge, fold the long edges in half again, and one more time. Fold the pages in and out so it makes a book that you can close or open into a long piece. Each small piece will be 3.5″ if you used 28″.
With your marker, draw a frame in each section to work within. A rectangle or circle will work.
We will paint Follow the Leader. The teacher will demonstrate and then you will paint your section. You can draw your object ahead in all of the spaces if you get done before others, but wait for the next set of instructions before you paint each section. The drawings can be slightly different each time. Use your space so do not draw too small.
On the first fold, leave it blank. The other side will be the front cover when the book closes.
Page 1. Dry Paint on Dry Paper. Keep your paper dry. Choose a small brush. Put a dot of water on top of each color in your paintbox. Now touch your brush into the paint palette and pick up some strong color and paint your object. Keep painting being sure to wash out your brush before you choose another color.
Page 2. Dry Paper. Put more water on your brush so you are painting with wetter paint. If you do not want colors to run together, leave a tiny line of white paper between the two colors.
Page 3. Put a little tape on the paper where you want to keep the white. Mix the main color you are using at the top of your paint palette. Make small wet puddles of the color. Add a little of the COMPLEMENT to it in a separate space. Pick a related ANALOGOUS COLOR SCHEME and make a puddle of it in a separate space. You can do a couple more variations of the main color. Now in a clean space, paint the background with a wet brush using one of your puddles. Keep moving the brush from edge to edge in the NEGATIVE SPACE until it is done. Now paint your object with color you have left. Watch that you have a dry space or color will run. If they do, let them mix. Pull the tape off and leave the white when dry.
Page 4. Again you can mix some colors and use leftover colors from the last ones that are on your palette. With a bigger brush, paint your background with your plain water. There may be some light color from dirty water. Around the edge of your background, negative spaces, paint a SHADOW with paint directly from your palette of mixed paint. Do the same, paint with clear water first on your object. YOU MUST KEEP A DRY LINE AROUND EACH PIECE YOU DO NOT WANT RUNNING TOGETHER. You can use this fluid technique by putting little dabs of contrasting color in places you wish to have interest.
Page 5. Using any combination of what we have tried, paint one example with all WARM COLORS.
Page 6. Using any combination of what we have tried, paint one example with all COOL COLORS.
As these dry, you may go into dry ones and add line or pattern detail with a permanent fine-line marker. The backside of the first page which becomes the cover of the book can have the object painted in any manner you choose. Inside the front cover, you could make a title page with WATER TECHNIQUES and your name.
Materials: examples of watercolor paintings, watercolor palettes, small and medium size brushes, water container and water, paper towel/rag, a small piece of masking tape, watercolor paper, marker, straight edge or circle to draw a picture plane
Helpful notes
Complementary colors: are those colors set opposite each other on the Color Wheel.
Value is the degree of lightness or darkness. The darkest value is pure black. The lightest value is pure white. When you use black and white next to each other, you see the greatest degree of contrast possible. When you mix black and white together in different proportions, you create different values of greys, ranging from a very soft, pale grey to a dark steel grey. To achieve a darker value of a color, you mix in some black.
Shades: The more black you add, the darker the value. The darker colors are called shades.
Tints: To create lighter values, you add white. The resulting colors are called tints.
Tone: When you add both black and white to a color, you create a tone. Adding a small amount of black and white to a color “tones it down,” or makes it less bright. Mix various amounts of white or black into a color to create light and dark values of that color.
Warm colors: range from yellow to red-violet. They remind us of sunlight, fire, and heat. They appear to advance or come toward the viewer in a painting.
Cool colors: range from yellow-green to violet on the color wheel. They remind us of cool seasons and of water and sky. Cool colors seem to recede or move back when used in a painting.
Assessment and Follow Up
- Small accordion book exercise-What did you discover about your natural form since you repeated it and drew several times? Were you able to understand and follow the folding directions? The watercolor painting prompts?
- Which watercolor technique do you like the best?
- Did you have any that you were not satisfied with? Why do you think that is true?
- What do you know to be true about painting with watercolor?
Suggested materials: Color Wheel and Color is Life! banners, worksheets, grey scale laminated color cards, tempera, gouache, or acrylic paints; black, white, and other colors paints, plastic cups for water, water, rags, palettes, leaf cut-outs, grid paper, pencil, black marker, 1 piece of white copy paper per student and one sheet of watercolor paper per student, scissors, 1 long narrow piece (4.5″ x 28″) for accordion book
Module 4 - Creativity through the Arts: Developing Creative Confidence and Skills
Theme 2: Design Lesson 6 - Introduction to Texture
Big Idea
Module 4 is a compilation of activities that introduces art materials, techniques, and the study of art as a visual language. Each activity encourages an exploration of media within given parameters and then a follow up of questions as to how this connects the student to one’s larger community and environment. This invitation is offered to use expressive ideas in the sequence you choose, adapt to age-appropriate activities, and edit for your community.
Overview
By the end of this lesson students will:
- Understand: the concept of texture.
- Become aware: of a variety of different textures.
- Practice: drawing a variety of textures with a variety of your available media.
- Think of how: this can be applied to a drawing on a One Health subject.
Lesson Supports
Artifacts of Learning
Plan
Notes
Review and Making Connections
How many blues do we see in the ocean, the sky? Is it a pale sky, was white added for a tint? The clouds? Is the blue more intense at the horizon line? Or less intense?
Preparations: texture samples
Hook: Texture Awareness
Put a variety of different, simple, and non-perishable objects in opaque sacks with a loose rubber band around the top.
- Without any conversation among students and no peeking into sacks, ask them to put their hand into the sack and silently feel the texture of each object.
- Pass the sacks around so that each student has felt at least five or six.
- Ask, “What are you discovering?”
Materials: sacks with different, simple, and non-perishable objects
Activity: Drawing Texture
- In their sketchbook, ask students to choose your media – markers or pencils might be good for this – to draw as best they can what they think they felt, including the texture as part of the drawing.
- Remind them this is not easy! So try their best. There is no one right answer.
- Next, if circumstances permit go outside and find a botanical object to draw which has more than one texture, for example, a tree, a plant, the ground. Draw indicating the texture as well as you can.
- Or students can take a thin paper-like typing paper outside with a piece of charcoal, or a soft led pencil and find mature surfaces where they can do rubbings.
- These rubbings could be cut and assembled into a collage.
Materials: sketchbooks, art materials (soft lead pencils, markers, thin paper, piece of charcoal, soft lead pencil), piece of charcoal
Activity: Texture Application
Put large watercolor sheets on the tables for students to share and experiment on.
- Make hatch marks with oil pastels
- Use different groups of colors to make short strokes and see how they mix.
- Use the worksheet and/or try your own combinations.
Materials: worksheets, large sheets of watercolor paper, scraps of watercolor paper/pastel paper, water cups, rags, painting smocks
Activity: Pattern Application
Let’s create a sampler of textures.
- Fold the paper in half, in half again, and in half again. Open up to reveal 8 sections.
- How about some things you saw in nature that are repeating in a pattern?
- Use oil pastels or markers to make a variety of colorful repeating lines in each section.
Worksheet: Shape with pattern
- Use a pencil to draw an outline of a gorilla.
- Draw it large enough to fill the whole paper.
- Go over the outline with your marker.
- Divide the gorilla into sections with a few straight and angled lines.
- With oil pastels or markers, fill in each area with repeated lines. Use ideas from your practice sampler.
Materials: paper, markers, oil pastels, an object for the students to make the large outline drawing
Activity: Pattern, texture, and repetition
Taking objects from nature and animals, create a replica – realistic or abstract – using pattern, texture, and repetition.
Have lots of visuals showing students a beautiful variety. Options: the shell of a turtle, the coat of a jaguar.
Materials: large paper to serve as a shell of a turtle, watercolor paper, variety of media.
Assessment and Follow Up
- Is it easier to draw texture or to verbally describe texture?
- How can texture add interest to your drawings?
- As you go for a walk, pay attention to the variety of different textures in nature.
- How many words can you think of to describe texture? As someone says a texture, try to think what it would look like.
Module 4 - Creativity through the Arts: Developing Creative Confidence and Skills
Theme 2: Elements & Principles of Design Lesson 7 - Introduction to Balance
Big Idea
Module 4 is a compilation of activities that introduces art materials, techniques, and the study of art as a visual language. Each activity encourages an exploration of media within given parameters and then a follow up of questions as to how this connects the student to one’s larger community and environment. This invitation is offered to use expressive ideas in the sequence you choose, adapt to age-appropriate activities, and edit for your community.
Overview
By the end of this lesson, students will be thinking about how BALANCE is important. They will understand how balance is important when thinking about One Health, in our daily lives, and even in all of our art. They will consider what they do to achieve balance in their days.
There are some vocabulary words that relate to art that we shall become familiar with in this lesson.
- Balance: pertains to art where there is equal distribution of visual weight on both sides of the center of the picture or object.
- Symmetrical or formal balance: has identical visual elements on both sides of a vertical axis or a horizontal axis. Mirror images are examples of symmetrical balances.
- Asymmetrical or informal balance: feels equally weighted on both sides of an imaginary line running through the center, but the elements are not the same. Show examples of art that represent both types of design.
Lesson Supports
Artifacts of Learning
Kids' Art
Plan
Notes
Review and Making Connections
- Refer to Module 1: Lesson 9 Get Regular Exercise.
- We practiced partner yoga poses which require balance.
- Let’s practice more.
- Stand up with enough space around you to move your arms and legs.
- Stand in a symmetrically balanced pose.
- We should be able to drop a line down through our center and each side would be identical.
- Now get into an asymmetrical pose.
- You are balanced because you are not falling, but each side is not identical to the other.
- Continue to strike a descriptive pose when one or the other is called out.
Hook: Symmetry and Asymmetry
What is symmetry?
- An object has symmetry when half of the image is a mirror of the other half.
- Test this by placing an invisible line through the middle of the object, to find that both sides match.
What is asymmetry?
- An object has asymmetry when half of the image is NOT a mirror of the other half.
- Test this by placing an invisible line through the middle of the object, to find that both sides DO NOT match.
Activity: Mirror Imaging
- Demonstration with volunteers at the chalkboard!
- Draw the opposite side of an object.
- Practice being able to duplicate the symmetry in objects accurately.
- Break down the elements top to bottom/toward or away from the central dotted line…
- Students continue practicing with the worksheet.
Activity: Positive and Negative Shapes
Shapes can be positive or negative. The main object in a painting is usually the positive shape – it has “weight” and stands out against the background. The surrounding background or leftover space is considered the negative shape. When you use both positive and negative shapes in a thoughtful way, it has a very pleasing effect.
More practice: Shapes, Positive and Negative Space
- Create a total of 11 to 15 sections on your paper with horizontal and vertical lines. You will have squares and rectangles of various sizes. No need to use a ruler. We don’t need to be perfect.
- Look at what you created, the layout on your paper. Some squares are larger than others. Some rectangles are thinner than others.
- Lightly, with your pencils, write the letters G O R I L L A and the number of their approximate population of mountain gorillas in the wild 1 0 0 0. (From the 2016 censuses, the mountain gorilla population has increased to approximately 1000 individuals in the world. Good news!)
- Each letter and number fits into a square or rectangle by touching at least two sides.
The letters and the numbers are the positive shapes; the shapes created between the letters and numbers are the negative shapes. - Color either the positive shape or the negative shape within each square or rectangle.
Assessment and Follow Up
- What are the different types of balance?
- What will you think about in the future with your art regarding balance?
- How does the concept of balance radiate out into your daily life?
- How does it fit into our science and environmental studies with One Health?
Module 4 - Creativity through the Arts: Developing Creative Confidence and Skills
Theme 3: Perspective
Big Idea
Module 4 is a compilation of activities that introduces art materials, techniques, and the study of art as a visual language. Each activity encourages an exploration of media within given parameters and then a follow up of questions as to how this connects the student to one’s larger community and environment. This invitation is offered to use expressive ideas in the sequence you choose, adapt to age-appropriate activities, and edit for your community.
Overview
In Theme 3, students will learn that perspective is showing 3-dimensional space on a 2-dimensional surface. Italian artists, during the Renaissance period discovered that when parallel straight lines move away from the observer, they seem to converge at a point in the distance.
By the end of this lesson students will:
- Knowledge: Becoming familiar with the concept of perspective and understand the vocabulary used to describe it.
- Understanding and Practicing: Making objects in the picture plane recede from the flat surface of the paper to look 3-dimensional.
- Skills: Complete a drawing which includes 1 point perspective or 2 point perspective.
Lesson Supports
Artifacts of Learning
Plan
Notes
Hook: Introducing perspective outside the classroom
Outside the classroom: Observation of a road receding and training our eyes to better observe the world surrounding us.
Example 1: Everyone stands in the middle of the road. Direct the children to look and follow with their eyes down the entire straight road. Explain that the parallel sides of the road appear to be meeting at a point in the distance. Do the diagonal lines of the road that are going into space seem to meet?
The point is called the vanishing point.
Example 2: Just outside of the classroom door, selects three volunteers of similar height. One student walks to the farthest pole that supports the roof of the school. The second volunteer stands at the second pole that is closer to the group. The third student stands at a third pole that is closest to us.
We observe that three students are standing in a straight line with equal distance between them. This is easy to see as the group stands directly in front of the three students. But when the group moves closest to one end, the student closest appears to be taller than the other two.
Things appear smaller in the distance and larger in the foreground. This is called perspective.
Hook: Introducing perspective inside the classroom
Inside the classroom: Show examples of art using perspective. Examples should include flat picture planes vs. art with dimension.
Helpful vocabulary
- Picture plane – The 2-dimensional surface of a painting or drawing.
- Two-dimensional or 2D – height plus width
- Directional lines – vertical, horizontal, diagonal
- Horizon line – The line in a picture in which the Earth’s surface and the sky appear to meet.
- Vanishing point – Where diagonal lines of edges going into space seem to meet.
- Three-dimensional or 3D – height, width, and depth.
Ways to achieve 3D in a drawing or a painting include the following:
- Shade
- Foreshortening
- Placement on paper – close objects seem lower on the page
- Closer objects seem to overlap objects behind them
- Closer objects seem larger
- Dark, cool, and dull colors recede while light, bright, and warm colors come forward.
- The linear perspective suggests depth.
Activity: One point perspective
Use lines that lead to a single point and show objects that are square or rectangular with your line of sight. Lines going back into space seem to converge at one vanishing point on the horizon line. Two-point perspective – deals with objects sitting at an odd angle with your eye. A corner is close to you than a flat side. Receding parallel lines seem to converge at two points on the horizon line.
- Get your sketchbook. Have a ruler, pencil, and eraser.
- Draw a straight horizontal line in the center of your sketchbook to represent the horizon line. Put a dot to represent the vanishing point, (Or use hand-outs to practice on.)
- Put a square above the horizon line, one below the horizon line and one on each side of the vanishing point overlapping the horizon line
- Have a box in the room and demonstrate this below student’s eye level line, above, on and the left and on and right. Can they see they see the top, bottom, or side?
- Now draw lines converging at the vanishing point. Decide where the back of the top bottom, or side and draw the vertical or horizontal line.
- Have a poster or worksheet for the students to see as an example.
- Do the same process with a 2-point perspective. Here you start with just a single vertical line for the corner that is closest. Both sides will converge at vanishing points. Sometimes you will see the top, too, or the bottom, too.
- Create a drawing that demonstrates your understanding of how to apply 1 or 2-point perspective. Could be a building, could be a road going off in the distance, could be a still life of boxes, could be nonobjective cubes. You could image a light source and shade the areas darker that would not get the light.
Worksheet 1: Perspective in a picture plan
Composition with one vanishing point. Add a horizon line and trees.
Worksheet 2: Perspective in a picture plan
Composition with two vanishing points. Add a horizon line and one cube.
Assessment and Follow Up
- Understanding perspective can be very complicated. Did you figure it out? If not, know that it exists and later you may wish to come back and work on it.
- If you figured it out, try doing some more exercises in your sketchbook as you have time.
- As you walk home or even in this room, study the subject as it you were going to draw a square or a rectangular object. Would you use 1-point or 2-point? Is the flat side or corner closer to you?
- Be aware as you see artists use perspective in their own art.
Module 4 - Creativity through the Arts: Developing Creative Confidence and Skills
Theme 4: Figure & Portrait Drawing
Big Idea
Module 4 is a compilation of activities that introduces art materials, techniques, and the study of art as a visual language. Each activity encourages an exploration of media within given parameters and then a follow up of questions as to how this connects the student to one’s larger community and environment. This invitation is offered to use expressive ideas in the sequence you choose, adapt to age-appropriate activities, and edit for your community.
Overview
The overall theme of Module 4 is focused on using The Arts as a persuasive medium to encourage members of the community to make positive choices in order to safeguard and protect all living things.
The human figure and portraits are often included in art. These lessons encourage the students to become familiar with proportion and various techniques and media as applied to drawing and painting portraits and full figures.
By the end of this lesson students will:
- Awareness: of the proportions of the human figure and the realistic juxtapositions and proportions of the human face.
- Respect: for no two figures or faces look alike in real life so they will not look alike as we draw them.
- Experiment: with many media and techniques of drawing that we can apply to figure and portrait drawing.
- Discover: how we can draw fairly realistically.
- Explore: how we can add personal expression to a series of portraits of self and others.
Lesson Supports
Artifacts of Learning
Kids' Art
Plan
Notes
Figure Drawing
- How many times taller is the average adult figure than their head?
- Where do your arms hang down to on your body?
- How big is your hand in relationship to your face?
- Do your elbows hang down to your waist?
Blind Contour Drawing with a Model
In Theme 2: Lesson 2 Introduction to Line, we were introduced to blind contour drawing. Here we take it further and use a variety of materials.
- Have paper and your marker ready. Let the model strike a pose. Start at the top of the figure and very slowly draw the outline without peeking at your paper. Go very slowly and go around each part of the body with one continuous line. You may need to come back over lines to get to a new place, but it is like one long string. Your drawing will be distorted but you will SEE the body.
Gesture Drawing
- Use a model to pose for a drawing.
2. Start with a marker, charcoal, oil pastel, or even a loaded paintbrush on paper. As the model poses, do very quick 1-3 minutes drawings. A whole series can be done on the same paper. Again, it is about looking intently so you SEE!
Follow Up and Gallery
- Notice how much fun it is to see everyone’s interpretation as no two drawings will look alike.
- When you look at your work what do you discover?
- Which of the drawing activities was the most fun for you? Why do you think that is true?
- Continue to draw figures in your sketchbook with figures doing a variety of things. Will someone pose for you at home?
- What have you discovered about the human figure proportions that you did not think about before?
- Have a look below at the variety of activities you can offer to your students when introducing figure drawing.
Figure Drawing: Lessons when proportion helps us observe more of the world around us.
Materials: male and female models, worksheets, pencils, Conte crayon, colored pencils, etc.
Figure Drawing with 1 Model
Materials: male and female models, worksheets, pencils, oil pastels, colored pencils, watercolors and supplies
