Baby Llama drawings

 ~ my sample ~

 

Grade 3 students in my province study Peru as part of their Social Studies curriculum. I've never done any Peruvian art project before and finally got around to developing one: baby llamas!!  I thought, why do llamas when you can do super cute adorable baby llamas! haha

 

I showed my kids photos of llamas on my big screen TV. We talked about the shapes, colours and facts about llamas and their role in Peruvian culture.

 

 

 

 

I did a demo of how I drew mine on big chart paper I use. Of course my kids are free to alter/change my drawing however they want. This just gives them a basic guideline of instruction; especially useful for my weaker students who need more step-by-step instruction.

This lesson was so popular, I had to teach it to two other grade levels: Grades 4 & 5. Even the high schooler's said "When are we going to learn how to draw baby llamas?" hahaha

 

Once kids drew it out on heavy white paper, they coloured it in using markers or watercolours. Then they glued on some pom-poms around the neck- traditional Peruvian llamas were decorated with brightly coloured tassels and such. I hand sewed a little bell onto each one (the students requested that- it took forever!!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Henna Hands

 

 

 

This is a project I do every year to support the learning of the Grade 3's regular classroom teacher. They study India in Social Studies so I do a big "Art of India" unit each year with them. This year I did henna hands again, but was inspired by a student to add the lacing around the border. He did it once during class when he had some free time, so I thought it would look nice as a border to their finished henna hands.

 

Students watched a video of an Indian woman applying mendhi for a wedding. Then we looked more specifically at the types of patterns and designs used. They were given a hand template to trace (I've had kids trace their own hands before but because this age can have such small hands, there wasn't much space for them to draw their designs! So now I give them a photocopy of a large outline of a hand. They cut this out (harder than it seems for some of them!) and use this as a template. Then they trace it onto some brown construction paper (I order specifically multicultural/skin coloured construction paper for this). Once drawn, they draw their designs directly using a fine tip brown marker. Then they cut them out and glue stick them to fuchsia/purple construction paper.

 

For the border, they used a single hole punch to punch holes around the edges. Then they used yarn to lace all through the holes. They really enjoyed this part!

Dali Inspired Surrealist Animals

 

This project was inspired by the 1948 painting The Elephants by the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. I introduced my Grade 4 students to the work of Dali and we discussed his style- barren landscapes with a real sense of depth and space, highly realistic details, lots of random objects grouped together.

Using this painting as a starting point, students were asked to think of some type of animal they could give really long, spindly legs to. This was pretty hard for them and they had to do quite a few rough copies before they actually achieved long legs!  

Once they had a decent rough copy, they drew their good copy on heavy white paper.

They outlined their drawing in Sharpie and then used watercolours to paint it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

this is a walrus!! lol

 

 

Abstract Tape Paintings

This was a project I had such high hopes for. However, by skipping one crucial step, the project (well, the end result at least) was a bit of a fail for most of my poor students. It was inspired by one of those abstract tape canvas paintings that are all over Pinterest. One of my students made one at school as a birthday present to a friend. She was storing it behind my desk as she worked on it after school in the Art Room. It came out really nice. One of my Grade 8 girls asked me if we could do that as our next project. I thought it would be a great lesson in abstract/non-representational art. 

Normally, I always make a sample of the project beforehand (to iron out all the kinks) but figured this one was pretty fool-proof. My biggest mistake was using paper instead of canvas. I figured using heavyweight paper and taking the stickiness off masking tape with lint from our clothes (like I do with my birch tree project) would work well. WRONG! It didn't work at all- once the paint dried and we tried peeling off the tape, it was so difficult. There were lots of paper tears and such. The acrylic paint really basically glued the tape down so it was really hard to get off. Watercolour doesn't seem to have the same effect because I've used masking tape with watercolours without major issues.

Anyhoo, some students worked really hard to touch up their paintings and they ended up looking really nice in the end. So if you try this project, don't be cheap like me and use canvas :)

Here are some of the 'rescued' paintings:

 

 

Wycinanki Christmas Tree Paper Cuts

"Wycinanki" pronounced Vee-chee-non-kee is the Polish word for 'paper-cut design'. Polish wycinanki became a popular folk craft in the mid-1800's. Colorful wycinanki were pasted on furniture or roof beams as decoration, hung in windows, and given as gifts.The most well known modern styles of Wycinanki comes from two districts. One is the Kurpie cut out. This is usually a symmetrical design, cut from a single piece of colored paper, folded a single time, with spruce trees and birds as the most popular motifs. The second style comes from the area of Lowicz. It is distinguished by the many layers of brightly colored paper used in its composition. (Source)

Grade 4,5 and 6 students made Christmas trees in the Lowicz style. They folded a 12 x 18" piece of green construction paper in half vertically. They drew and cut out a fir tree design, then, keeping it folded, cut the typical wycinanki 'notches' into the edges. Then, using scraps of colored paper from my big box of scrap paper, they added decorations, with the goal of keeping it all fairly symmetrical. 

This project took about 2 - 80 minute periods. 

The inspiration for this project came from image below which I found online.

Image Source