Foot Drawings

This was a sketchbook assignment I had in art school and I've passed it along to my lucky students! ha!  "Draw your foot holding an object"

Love the results!

Pop-Out Reptile in Chalk Pastel

This is a fun chalk pastel lesson that I've done for years with Grade 8 students. I found the lesson plan HERE on the School Specialty website. Here's how we did it:

I pre-distribute white tempera paint into old plastic containers...

on one sheet of black construction paper, paint some 'sections'

on a second sheet of black paper, sketch out and paint a large reptile. 

let the paint dry - we did two coats of white paint so it was x-tra bright...

take out your chalk pastels....

students had to use a minimum of two colours per section....

blend with your finger or a paper towel...

one finished background....

then do the same to the reptile and carefully cut it out....

here's a student colouring the background...

Lastly, you stick a bunch of cardboard squares on the back of the reptile- this will help 'raise' it off the background and glue it to the background.  You could also use those 3-D glue dots for scrapbooking but for me, cutting cardboard squares is easy and, even better, FREEEEE!!!

Ta da!

here's a detail showing the 'pop-up' effect

Sign Language Contour Hands

Contour drawing of hands are one of my favourite lessons to teach and I teach a variety of them.  Students start off thinking there's no way they'll be able to do a realistic drawing of their hands, and then, with time and careful observation and practice, they are able to draw some pretty impressive hands.  I usually start hand drawings in Grade 9 when I feel ALL of them have the patience and skills to be sucessful at it. 

The Incredible Art Department website has loads of different hand-related lessons for mid-high:

http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/Files/hands.htm

For this lesson, kids started out doing blind contour drawings of their hands.  Then moved onto continuous contour drawings of their hands.  I gave them a brief intro into American Sign Language (ASL) and gave them a handout showing all the hand poses.  Then they choose a word (their name, etc.) and draw their own hand in the appropriate pose.  They do these on individual sheets of regular printer paper.

When they have their hands finished, we graphite transfer them onto heavy white paper. Then pass over the lines again with pencil, then they do abstract shapes of really transparent watercolour over the hands.

Ta da!

Embossed Foil

This was a lesson I found years ago in a 2003 issue of 'Arts and Activities' magazine.  It was entitled:  "Designing the Matwork on Your Art ... or the Artwork on Your Mat". It's essentially a foil embossing project utilizing line and pattern.

I didn't have embossing foil, so we used heavy duty barbecue foil folded 4 times into a square instead.  It totally worked. Here's how we did it:

I cut strips of foil, about, er, um, 6 inches wide or so...

Fold it four times, try to keep it smooth, until you have a square. I try to keep the dull side of the foil on the outside, but it's not crucial. You can add dots of glue in the corners between the layers to keep it all nice and flat and together- lay a heavy book on top to help it dry flat.

You need to do the embossing on top of a 'soft' surface: stack of newspapers, magazines, etc. 

We used fun foam sheets.

Materials for the embossing stage: foam, foil, dull pencil.

So then students emboss a pattern; it can be totally abstract or have realistic images. They need to aim to have different patterns coming out from all sides, b/c these are going to be extended off the page onto black paper later with pencil crayons.

Embossing finished.

Then paint on a coat of black acrylic paint- get into all the indentations, then gently wipe it off with some paper towels until you get the effect you like. This helps 'age' the foil and brings out the relief more. Let dry.

Then use white glue to glue it onto a piece of heavy black paper. This student used too much glue- naughty, naughty! This will show up when it dries, so demo to kids the right way to apply white glue. Just dots.

Kids used scraps of black paper to test out their colours before committing to their good copy.

Pencil in lines and patterns first- extend the patterns of the foil. Then colour using pencil crayons. They show up really well on the black paper.

Grade 8 results: Ta da!