Geometric Painted Hearts

I found some thin washi tape at Michaels a while back and absolutely love it- it has so many uses within the art room. I developed this painted heart lesson using this tape. 

So Grade 8 student created a symmetrical heart on folded paper and used this as a template to trace onto cardstock. Then they could either leave the paper white and put the tape on in geometric lines or paint it a colour first such as gold. 

Once the tape was put down students used tempera paint in whatever colour(s) they wanted. Many chose to do an ombre or gradation using tints of a colour.  Once this dries, peel off the tape (satisfying!!) and cut out the heart.

Some Grade 8 examples:

this student added a dandelion onto the background which is gorgeous.

this student created a galaxy

Dragon Eye Drawings & Paintings

I've seen this super cool lesson floating around Pinterest for quite a while. I finally bit the bullet and made my FIRST (yes my first) Teachers Pay Teacher purchase, haha. 

Let me tell you, it was the best $4 I've ever spent! 

I bought the "Eye of the Dragon" lesson from the shop Art with Creations Claudia Loubier 

who is from Quebec.

The digital download comes with the lesson plan and lots of handouts with 

visual reference images and practice sheets. 

My Grade 5 students drew their good copies on 9 x 12" heavy white paper.

They used the coloured pencil worksheet to practice blending colours on first 

before starting colouring on their actual eye. 

Some students preferred to use watercolour or charcoal. 

The kids really enjoyed this project and they all turned out very cool and colourful!

charcoal pencil

Concentric Circles Marker Design

This colour theory project is great for either the start or the end of a school year. It's also perfect as a sub lesson! I'll be doing it again this September when my Junior High mixed grade class (7-9) starts. It uses basic materials but yields lovely results and gives you a good idea of any

 new students starting art abilities. 

I posted this project before with my younger grades HERE. This project is my take on the popular warm/cool hand project you see alot on Pinterest. I believe the originator of this project was Art Projects for Kids, though I could no longer find the original post.

 I'm fortunate in that my junior high students all have their own laptops, so they use those to find images to reference for this project. I leave the subject matter up to them but you cold limit it to a specific theme such as plants, animals, nature, etc. I give them a 11 x 17" sheet of paper with concentric circles already printed on it.  Then they sketch their image onto it with pencil. 

They use warm or cool colours for the background and vice versus for the image. We use a variety of brands of markers in my art room but Mr. Sketch works really well with this project 

because of it's perfect thick chiseled marker tip.

Some Grade 7 - 9 results:

(this student wanted to use watercolour)