Thursday 21 June 2012

Soft Pastel Cats

By Dora (Year 2)
Lesson Background:
I saw these gorgeous glue and chalk pastel cats on Mary Making: http://marymaking.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/glue-and-chalk-pastel-cats.html
We didn't have any access to appropriate glue, so we made ours purely out of soft pastel.

Lesson Materials:
1 sheet A3 thin black card per child
1 box coloured soft pastels per child/pair
1 lead pencil per child

Lesson Steps:
1.  Look at the life and art of Laurel Birch.  Discuss how she represented cats through her unique use of colour, line, shape and style.
2.  Look at the sample artworks on Mary Making.
3.  Demonstrate how to draw each element of the cat's face and body one step at a time while the students follow along on their own drawings.  Use finger spacing to help proportion the page (e.g. "the head starts about 3 finger spaces from the top and finishes about half way down the page", etc).  Encourage the children to make their cats' features as sharp, pointy, round, curvy, thin, etc as they want.
4.  Demonstrate how to outline and colour with a soft pastel.  Children go back and colour theirs.
5.  Children outline all lines and shapes with black soft pastel when the drawing and colouring are complete.

Student Artworks:
By Jeff (Year 1)

By Gabe (Year 2)

By Jackson (Year 2)
By Ben (Year 1)
By Jasmine (Year 1)
By Al Zahra (Year 2)

By Paige (Year 1)
By Marlo (Year 2)
By Rohan (Year 1)

By Charlie (Year 2)

Guided drawing sample
My sample artwork to guide students

4 comments:

  1. These are wonderful - so bold and colorful! I'd proudly frame any of them. Thanks for the mention!

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    Replies
    1. No worries, Mary! My class and I absolutely loved the ones on your blog- they were a great inspiration to us!

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  2. these were soooooooooooooooooooo fun to do!!!!

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  3. I think our art is amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete