Lady Liberty Portraits

This was a lesson I saw quite a few years ago in Art & Activities magazine entitled "Give Me Liberty" by Debra Sweeny. I do it with Grade 5 students. I sart by showing a video and giving some history and background about the Statue of Liberty (a gift to the USA from France!)

Students practice drawing her portrait (not easy!) and then start their good copy. The lesson uses newspaer, but I don't know about you, but it's so hard to get newspaper donated to my art room these days. So I use plain paper with text printed on it which I photocopy.

Students draw the portrait, outline it in Sharpie, then paint over it with a wash of turquoise watercolour (to mimic the patina). 

While those dry, paint a background sheet however you like. Once dry, cut out the portrait and glue it onto your painted background sheet.

Some finished Grade 5 paintings:

 

Scratch Art

This was a fun last day project I did with Grades 4,5 and 6 classes. I bought a bunch of packs of these scratch art papers from Dollarama. They had three or four different colours, like rainbow, purple holographic and gold holographic. 

I cut pieces of white paper to match the size of the scratch paper. Students planned their designs on the white paper, taped it to the scratch paper and traced over the pencil lines with a ball point pen. 

Then they used bamboo sticks to scratch away their designs. The whole project took about 40 minutes but double that would be more ideal.