Falling Leaves Watercolor Painting

Grade 4-6 students made these lovely falling leaves watercolour paintings using liquid watercolours.

I was inspired by THIS post on Pinterest- no source is given.

I cut some manila tagboard in half and students drew a leaf of their choice on it. They could draw one or two. They needed to include a stem and draw the veins on. Once cut out, this was their tracer.

*I encouraged the older students (Grade 6) to draw a more challenging leaf, such as a maple or oak. Grade 4 students mostly drew the simpler leaves.

The they traced it on their thin long sheets of heavy paper. They needed to include some overlapping and create a sense of movement with some diagonal directional lines. 

Once drawn out in pencil, they outlined everything in Sharpie.

Time to bust out the liquid watercolours!

We reviewed warm vs. cool colours. They painted their leaves first using warm fall tones.

The next class, they painted their background using cool colours. 

 

Rhythm & Movement: Silhouette Collages

 

A great lesson to teach the principles of rhythm and movement in art- use diagonal lines and figures showing movement.  See all the steps in my previous post HERE and HERE.

I found the original lesson posted HERE.

Supplies needed: colourful copy paper, magazines, scissors, glue sticks, black construction paper for mounting. 

Grade 7-9 artworks:

Giraffe's Can't Dance paintings

This is a great project to teach the idea of both figurative-type drawing and creating a sense of movement. I try and teach it every year to my Grade 5's. The book, that this lesson is based on, is also very charming and gives a wonderful message about being yourself. 

I posted about this lesson a couple of years ago and you can see more of the steps HERE.

I tend to change up the background every year or so and have done the background paper using watercolour, liquid tempera and tempera cakes (seen below). 

The students draw their own giraffe dancing in a pose of their choice on regular white paper. 

They colour this using coloured pencils and outline it with a fine tip Sharpie. These are then cut out and glued carefully onto their background paper. 

This display is always a crowd pleaser and makes everyone who views it smile!

First: paint a background sky and ground and hills with paint of your choice. 

I demonstrate how to fade out a full moon.

Draw your giraffe in pose of your choice. Outline in sharpie. Colour. Cut out.

Some Grade 5 artworks:

 

Giraffe's CAN Dance!

Giraffe's Can't Dance has to be one of the most popular art lessons out there for Art teachers. And for good reason- the project teaches so many skills and they always come out so fun and whimsical!

I started by reading the book, "Giraffes Can't Dance" (by Giles Andreae, illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees) to my class. It's a charming story about how being different is okay and how you can still be good at something even though you have to go about it a little "differently." 

The project is done in two parts: the painted background: exploring value changes/gradations, tints, and landscape techniques. Then the giraffe part, which is drawn on a separate sheet of paper and cut out.

So I demonstrated how to create a value change in the moonlit sky- this was fairly tricky for some kids but after some practice they got the hang of it. We used tempera paint.Towards the bottom of the page they added some distant hills (blue + white = tint)  and then the grass. For the grass, the students mixed their own shade of green using the blue and yellow and white. 

You can use this lesson to reinforce or teach background, middle ground and foreground.

On regular white paper, students drew their dancing giraffe. I gave them a handout with giraffe pictures so they could have something to reference from. We discussed how to get a sense of movement in the pose. The coloured these using coloured pencils, then outlined in thin black marker. Finally, they were cut out (I had to cut out some of the inside cuts with an x-acto knife) and glued onto the background paper. Students then chose to add movement marks, some added white stars, and some wanted to add some glitter glaze for some extra 'pizazz'. 

This project, by far, garners me the most compliments when I hang these up on the bulletin board. Staff, students and parents all love them! It's a guaranteed crowd pleaser!