Haunted House Silhouette Painting

With Halloween just around the corner, I though I'd start posting some holiday lessons. 

This is a repost of a Halloween project a Grade 8 class made a couple of years ago. It's a great lesson on positive and negative space as well as architectural features.

I was inspired by the project  "Sun and Moon" from the Art Attack website.

Start off with a sheet of construction paper for the background- orange, purple, or green. Then draw a large circle (for the full moon) onto yellow or orange construction paper, cut it out and glue it 

onto the background paper.

 

Before sketching out ideas, I showed a slideshow of different haunted houses and had students share ideas. Students planned their haunted houses on a sheet of white paper first. I find it's easier to work out the design on white paper- easier to erase/make changes as opposed to drawing directly on construction paper, where any type of erasing shows up and can easily wreck the paper. 

I provided a handout illustrating a variety of Victorian-type houses. You want to encourage interesting window shapes, perhaps a fence, withered trees, a pathway leading to the house, etc. and any "Halloween"-type accessories (cats, bats, pumpkins, witches, ghosts, etc.)

Once you have your drawing finalized, coat the back of the paper completely using your pencil.  We're making transfer-type paper here. Then tape your drawing onto your coloured background sheet and pass over all the pencil lines using a ball-point pen. Press fairly hard. 

This will transfer the graphite onto the coloured paper.

So once you remove the white paper you can see the clean transfer of the drawing 

onto the construction paper. 

We used black India ink (as it's such a rich, true black) for our paintings, but thinned down acrylic or good quality tempera paint would probably work as well. You can also add smaller, more intricate details, using a black marker.

Here are some Grade 8 results- they had alot of fun with adding all sorts of fun and spooky details.

I find this age group has such a vivid imagination!