Chalk Pastel Dinosaurs

Here's a cute chalk pastel project I do with my Grade 4's every year. They study dinosaurs in the class so I use this lesson to tie in to their class lessons. You can see previous year's work HERE.

On black paper, they sketch a dinosaur in pencil. Then they colour it using chalk pastels and outline everything with either a black oil pastel or black wax crayons. Chalk pastels are definitely my students LEAST favourite art medium, but there's always a couple of kids that enjoy it.  I can't say it's my most favourite medium either, haha!

Some Grade 4 results:

Chalk Pastel Dino Drawings

Here's another project I do for my "Prehistoric Art" unit my Grade 4's study with me. 

It's a very simple, straightforward project that yields great results. You really can't go wrong with chalk pastel on back paper, in my opinion. Transporting them home without smudges, though, is a whole other issue!

I have a ton of dinosaur books that I collect at garage sales over the summer. Students flip through these and decide on a dinosaur to draw. On 12 x 18" black construction paper, students draw out their dinosaur and need to include some type of setting as well. They can make their dinos any colour as we really don't know what colours they were. They pass over all their pencil lines with a black wax crayon, then start colouring with chalk pastels. I encourage them to mix colours and add highlights for extra interest and realism.

Cave Art Paintings

This is a Lascaux Caves inspired art project I do with my Grade 4's during our "Prehistoric Art" unit. 

I start off by showing a Youtube video explaining all about the famous Lascaux caves in France. Then we look at some up close photos of the actual cave paintings. We discuss what types of materials early man might have used to create the paintings (animal fat mixed with pigment,s blood, ash/charcoal. etc). We also talk about why they would have created these paintings and the types of animals that are represented.

For the art project, I pre-cut large squares of simple brown paper from a big roll I have. Students can choose to tear/rip the edges to make it uneven and rough. using tempera pucks, students mix a variety of earth tones and paint over the entire paper to give it a cave wall type effect. 

I give the students a handout of various cave art images for them to create their animal stencil.

On piece of cardstock/tagboard, students draw a simple outline of an animal.

Then they poke a hole in the middle and cut out the interior to create a stencil.

They place the stencil onto their painted background paper and, using charcoal or chalk pastels, rub around the outside of the stencil then use their finger to blend the chalk to the inside. It creates a really cool soft faded effect that also mimics shading a bit.

They can overlap and change colours however they wish.

Grade 4 results: