Pencil Monsters

This is a creative and fun lesson that I like to do at the start of the year with my Grade 4 students. It gives me a fairly good idea of my new students' drawing and creative capabilities and is also pretty straightforward and a good way to ease kids back into the art room routines. 

I found the lesson HERE on the Apex Elementary Art blog.

So I save all my stubby pencils that won't fit into the electric sharpener in a zip lock back in a drawer by my sharpener. That way it's convenient and easy for me to remember to put them in there as opposed to simply tossing them in the garbage. 

Each student gets a 8 x 11" sheet of cardstock. They goal is to take a pencil and design a monster/creature that's somehow interacting with the pencil. Some students obviously get this better than others. Creativity isn't something one can necessarily teach! They sketch their image out in pencil and then colour it in using black markers.  Once they've decided where their pencil goes and everything is coloured they bring it to me and I hot glue on the pencil.

Some Grade 4 results!

Alberta Landscape Regions in Pointillism Style

I've never taught a Pointillism lesson before simply because when I've tried to make a sample, I've found it so tedious. If I think it's tedious I imagine my kids, who have a shorter attention span than me, would really struggle with completing one!

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. French artists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism.

Nonetheless, I think I've found a project that is not so tedious and time consuming and it's by simply using markers. I collaborated with the Social Studies teacher for this project. In Grade 4 Social Studies in my province, they learn about the six bio-regions of Alberta. Alberta is blessed with six distinct natural regions: Aspen Parkland, Boreal Forest, Canadian Shield, Grassland, Foothill and Rocky Mountain. Each region has its own unique landscape features and climate and each supports its own distinct species of animals and plants. I showed students photo examples of each region from THIS WEBSITE for inspiration.

Image Source

On regular copy paper, students lightly sketched out a landscape of their choice. I provide lots of photo references and try to buy calendars on sale. Using a variety of markers, students coloured in each section using only dots. I encouraged them to mix different colours within each section to get a more sophisticated effect. If you're on a time crunch, cut the paper down to 5 x 7".