ABOUT THIS BLOG

"A Faithful Attempt" is designed to showcase a variety of K-12 art lessons, the work of my art students, as well as other art-related topics. Projects shown are my take on other art teacher's lessons, lessons found in books or else designed by myself.
Thanks for visiting!
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I acknowledge, with deep respect, that I am gathered on Treaty 7 territory. I acknowledge the many First Nations, Métis and Inuit whose footsteps have marked these lands for generations. I respect the histories, languages and cultures of all the Indigenous peoples of Canada, whose presence continues to enrich our community.

Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Exaggerated Drawings

 


This is actually a project I did in high school. I still have my original believe it or not.
It's a very valuable drawing assignment great for practicing value and shading.
This is a technique used quite a lot in advertising and design: scale exaggeration. You could also discuss the design principles; this one relating to proportion and how artists can manipulate and exaggerate proportion to express moods and experiences.

Here are the directions: Find an appropriate image in a magazine: you're going to cut off part of the image and visually 'stretch' the missing part using pencil. Using figures tends to be quite popular but it can be anything, really. If students can only find colour images, then just photocopy them so they have a black and white image to work with. Glue the magazine image onto a piece of drawing paper and then you're ready to go. The key is to make them match the photo in terms of accurate shading.  You want to fool the eye.

Grade 10-12 finished artworks:





this is Boris Johnson, lol





Sunday, February 15, 2026

Cozy Creatures in Winter art project


This was a quick and adorable art lesson I developed for a 40 minute class I had to teach. Normally my periods are 80 minutes long, so it was a challenge to find a project my Grade 7-9 students could complete in that short time. 

I found this small winter themed scrapbook paper at Dollarama. I've never seen anything like it- it looks definitly AI produced but I was here for it! Any teacher who visited my room and saw it LOVED it, lol.
The paper was about 5 x 5". There were about 8 different designs- as students walked in, they chose one.


I used regular photocopy paper and split it into 4 pieces, so each square was small. The students googles clip art images on 'animals with scarves or sweaters". They drew their animal in pencil, then, using a fine tip black marker, they added stippling for fur texture. they then coloured in the scarf/sweater using pencil crayons. They cut it out and glued it onto their background. I love how cute they came out!!






Cozy cuteness overload!
 




















Saturday, February 7, 2026

Jim Dine 4 Hearts Art Project


Here's another fast and easy Valentine's art project with an art history component. 

I saw this on an Instagram reel from @scholtenart. I altered the last time a bit.

This was the first project I did with a new set of Grade 4-6 students. Honestly, it was easy for alot of the older kids, but the boys, especially, needed help and reminders with cutting and gluing and all those fine motor skills that boys sadly seem to lack compared to girls. This took my classes one 40 minute period to complete. 

This is the first year I've tries tempera paint sticks and they are fantastic! It's like drawing with a really slick, smooth, colorful glue stick!

I pre-cut heavy white paper into squares (9" x 9") and then pre-cut coloured photocopy paper into squares that would fit onto that in 4th (I can't really explain math, lol)


Students covered the white paper with patterns using paint sticks.



Then they chose two squares of a colour, stacked them and cut out a heart shape. 
Review positive and negative space.


Glue stick these onto the background like so. Then we used black and white pencil crayons to add some shading and highlights to the hearts. 



I love how fun and colourful these turned out!





















 

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