Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Fantasy Building Designs


This is a great project when students are studying any type of architecture or building unit. It allows them to utilize all the elements they may have learned about (arches, basic shapes that make up buildings, surface texture, etc) into a 'mash-up' creative type of building drawing. 
I was inspired by this fantastic lesson on the "Shine Brite Zamorano" art blog. 
This lesson takes between 2-3 classes depending...
Although I encouraged students to make really creative and unusual building drawings, 
the majority turned out quite realistic and very castle-y or Taj Mahal-y!

Students start off by using basic shapes to sketch out a building structure on plain white paper. Then slowly add details such as arches, windows, doors and rooftops. Add decorations and surface patterns like brickwork, stripes, dots, etc. One the drawing is complete, outline it all with a black marker. I encouraged line variety (thick and thin lines). Carefully cut out the building and set aside.


Next class, on another sheet of white paper (same size), students create a background using chalk pastels. 
I limited the colors to only 2-3, so it wouldn't get too fussy, and we discussed how the focus 
should be on the building, therefore a more limited color palette was needed just to 'enhance' the building. 
One the background is nicely blended out, glue on the building (we found glue stick didn't 
really hold it that well so used a thin layer of white glue instead).


Grade 3 artwork:












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