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