Positive Negative Space Plant Drawing

This was a wonderful drawing lesson my second practicum student taught to a mixed class of Grade 7-9 students last month. It was well received among students and yielded a high success rate!

I believe she found the inspo for the project HERE (via Pinterest). 

After her demonstration and explanation of positive and negative space, students looked up an image of a houseplant (some chose flowers) online.

They drew a contour line drawing (no shading) of this on 8 x 11" cardstock. 

Once drawn, they drew a dividing line across the entire image anywhere they wanted- they used a ruler for this step, but some students chose a wavy line. 

They decided which one was their negative space side and outlined that in Sharpie, then coloured the rest in pure black. No lines or details or shading was done on the positive part of that side. 

Just completely black and white.

Once the negative space side was complete, they used painters tape to tape down the negative space side a bit so it wouldn't get any charcoal pencil on it. then they shaded in the positive space side using charcoal pencils. 

I love the variety of these and how beautifully they turned out!

 

Flowers in a Vase Watercolor Painting

This is a classic still life painting lesson that was co-taught by one of my practicum students. 

Her background is not in art, so I suggested this project as it's fairly simple but allows for a lot of creativity for the students. This was taught to a mixed class of Grade 4 - 6 students. 

I found the inspiration from the wonderful Deep Space Sparkle website  HERE and HERE. 

Here is my quick demo showing how to draw a vase/vessel and then a variety of flowers- we also encouraged spring flowers such as tulips and daffodils.

Student drew their good copy on 12 x 18" heavy white paper. 

While the kids were drawing, I kept myself busy with one of my LEAST favourite art room tasks- refilling the liquid watercolours. I saw this sauce cup idea on a blog years ago, but I don't know, I think I need to re-think it. I feel like the paints evaporate so fast. I refill them, then a month later, the containers (with lids) are dried up. Don't get me started on how fast the yellow gets contaminated. 

Anyhoozle, once the kids are finished drawing, they outline everything with sharpie or black wax crayon (everyone chose sharpie). 

Some early starters used the regular pan watercolours, but we switched later to liquid watercolours. 

I gave an brief review and demonstration on how to use these. 

Some finished artworks!

 

Shakespeare Inspired Creative Art Projects

In my high school. Grade 10-12 students get a Shakespeare unit (I still remember studying Hamlet and Macbeth in high school) where they have to complete a creative project at the end of the unit to show their understanding. It can be in any creative medium (film, music, etc), and many students choose visual art. The finished work is put on display on tables and all the classes walk around viewing the work.

The Shakespeare work studied this time was Hamlet (1599), Twelfth Night (1601), and 

As You Like It (1600).

My favourite line from Hamlet!

This was about 12 feet tall!