Haunted House Silhouette Ink Paintings

This is one of my most favourite Halloween themed projects to do with my Juniour High students (Grade 7 - 9). It involved positive and negative space as well as architecture. 

I posted it about it previously HERE.

On white 12 x 18" drawing paper, students drew a silhouette of a haunted house. They use their laptops to find reference materials online and then draws from that. The need to include a full moon as well. 

The they choose an equal sized piece of coloured construction paper. They first glue on a full moon cut from construction paper. They use plastic lids to use as a circle tracer.

Then they coat the back of their drawing with a dark pencil. 

I have chunky 4B graphite sticks.  They're essentially making their own carbon transfer paper.

They tape their drawing onto to the construction paper and trace firmly over all the pencil lines with a blue ball point pen. This will transfer their drawing onto the construction paper. 

Then they paint their entire image using India ink. 

Some Grade 7 - 9 results!

Glue Line Chalk Pastel Sunflowers

This is one of my most popular projects and yields really beautiful and dramatic results. 

I try to do this project in September when sunflowers are in the grocery stores. 

I've posted this project previously HERE and HERE.

Grade 6 students start by practicing drawing a sunflower on scrap paper. Once they're comfortable with it, they sketch it only 12 x 18" black construction paper. Then they pass over all the lines using Elmer's clear glue. Let this dry FLAT overnight.

The next class, I demonstrate how to shade the petals using white, orange and yellow shades. 

They colour in the flower first with chalk pastels, then colour the background. 

This is a super messy project!! Some kids absolutely hate the dry feeling of the chalk so they wrap their fingers in a Kleenex to blend. 

The final step is to clean up the glue lines using a damp thin paintbrush.

Some Grade 6 results!

Van Gogh 'Sunflowers' meets 'Starry Night' in Oil Pastel

This project mashes up Van Gogh's famous sunflowers with his Starry Night as a background.

Grade 4 - 6 students started off by practicing sketching a sunflower on scrap paper. Once they were confident in how they looked, they sketched them onto blue 9 x 12" construction paper.

Using oil pastels, I demonstrated how to mimic Van Gogh's technique of short strokes

 and his ability to mix colours. 

Students coloured the sunflowers first them moved onto the background, 

trying to recreate Starry Night using swirls and wavy lines. 

Some Grade 4 -6 pieces: