Van Gogh Starry Night Snowglobes

This is a wonderful December lesson that incoprorates the holiday season as well as an art history component with Van Gogh's Starry Night painting.

I found this lesson HERE on the Painted Paper website. 

For the villages, we used these amazing village drawing booklets found HERE on the art blog Art with Mrs. E.  Totally worth the money and I am CHEAP, so you know it's good.

I pre-traced a large circle on heavy white 9 x 12" paper.  Grade 4-6 students looked at Van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting and drew their own village. It could anything they wanted. They added swirls in the sky to mimic his style. They also drew their own base for the snow globe.

They outlined everything in Sharpie.

Then coloured using pencil crayons. Some painted the sky with watercolours. 

Once dry, cut out.

Some early finishers:

 

Anatomical Illustrations

For centuries, artists and scientists have been fascinated by the structures of the human body. Most famously, we think of the illustrations done by Da Vinci. 

This was a class I taught with one of the Biology teachers at my school. She provided anatomical books for the students to use. The challenge was to draw an anatomical illustration combining creative and artistic elements. 

Grade 7-9 students could use any media they wanted. 

Here are a few example of what they came up with!

 

Rose Drawing for Valentine's Day

I needed a quick and effective one day lesson for a new group of students I had. This rose drawing lesson gave me a really good indication of each student's level. As well, they were able to take their art home that day and give it to someone for Valentine's Day. 

I found the drawing tutorial on Art Projects for Kids. 

My class is a mixed group of Grade 4,5,6 students, so this tutorial has enough detail 

to make the rose look dimensional, but not so much to make it difficult. 

I demonstrated for them how to draw the rose, then some simple shading techniques using coloured pencils. Students were encouraged to add their own details to make it their own style. 

 

 

Tim Burton Inspired Portraits

                                              

This is a project my Grade 7-9 students finished before winter break. They absolutely loved it. I'd say this is one of the most popular projects I've taught to this grade- the overall engagement was really high and all students were successful! The cool part was telling my students that Burton went to art school! He's not just a filmmaker but also and artist and he was also fired from Disney, lol!

I was inspired by the many many posts I found online; there are also a number of Youtube tutorials.

I started off by showing a video biography of Tim Burton's art and showing posters of many of his films- sadly enough, my kids had never heard of Edward Scissorhands or Beetlejuice or any of his 'older' work!! Tim Burton has a very particular aesthetic and vision; his films are quirky and dark, offbeat and sympathize with the outcast.  Students were able to talk about his 'Gothic" style. So I pointed out his style of large hollow eyes, thin, gaunt figures, and overall quirkiness. 

Students could draw whomever they wanted. Some made up characters, others were inspired by characters from films. A group of students did some Disney princesses which was pretty cool. 

Some started off with a rough copy on white paper but most jumped into it directly onto their 12 x 18" grey construction paper.

Once the drawing was complete, they outlined all their pencil lines with a black coloured pencil (Prismacolour is the best). 

They, using the same black pencil crayon, they added shading by just using lighter pressure. They used a white coloured pencil for the eyes and any areas of highlight. 

  

Once finished, they glued their drawing onto a large sheet of black construction paper, drew a whimsical frame around it and cut it out. 

Here are some finished artworks- these were super popular with staff- I didn't know how many  Tim Burton super-fan teachers were at my school!

Here are the Disney characters:

 

And the rest!