Cross Hatched Animals-- Third/Fourth Grade

Cross-hatching is fun, but a difficult art technique (at least in my opinion).   The third/fourth grade class picked out some animals from Zoobooks magazines and drew them in pencil.  Then, we looked at Brian Selznick's books for inspiration. Wonderstruck
  His novels are full of beautiful cross-hatched drawings, alternating with the chapters.  Plus, the two books I have read by him are charming and wonderful stories.  Read them!  You'll love them too, I guarantee it.  They are listed below.  I think bringing these types of books into the classroom is a great way to tie in to real-life applications and literature, as most of your kids will have seen these books before.  If they haven't seen the books, they will probably want to read them after looking at them.  I photocopy some of the pages and pass them out for the kids to look at.  I also have the books available on the table for the kids to browse if they wish.  Your school library might have them, but I purchased copies for my classroom.





After the kids drew their animals, I demonstrated the cross-hatching and shading for them and the kids made sure to keep their reference pictures close by.

Nonobjective Line Drawing-- 3/4s

Third/Fourth Grade:  The students learned how to identify realistic, abstract and non-objective art.  The 3/4s worked on a non-objective graphite drawing.  Using only shapes, lines, texture and value the students drew an interesting non-objective design.  Non-objective art is art that has no recognizable objects.  Value in art is the degree of lightness or darkness.  The students completed a value scale using pencil.  They learned how to create contrast by placing dark shades next to light shades, rough texture next to smooth texture and incorporating a variety of sizes in their art (tiny, small, medium, large).  Their drawing needed to have a variety of lines, texture using texture rubbings, contrast, use of pressure, layering and blending, and five values (white, black, light gray, medium gray, dark gray).  One of the artists they looked at is Wassily Kandinsky.  

4th/5th Grade Secret Cities-- Drawing in 3-d, shading

Secret Cities
The 4/5s learned  how to draw 3-d forms and include shading and shadows.  They stacked these shapes to make a "secret city".  

I got this idea from a book about drawing by Mark Kistler. 

This artist had a series of television shows that taught kids how to draw 3-d pictures step-by-step.  Here is a video of a "secret city" mural.

Primary Self-Portraits and Machinery Drawings

I started out the year with the Primary students (1st grade) drawing small, quick self portraits. One kid drew himself as a pirate! lol.

The 4/5s (4th/5th graders mixed) looked at gears and drew them from observation.  I also had pictures of gears and machinery for them to look at.  I showed them basic steps to add shading and value.  After they had drawn 3+ gears, I told them that we would be turning them into inventions.  We had things like a cupcake maker or lego sorter!  We read the Scholastic Art magazine about Leonardo DaVinci's sketches and viewed pictures of his inventions. 

gears to draw

 

 

I'm still trying to figure out how to format pictures on this blogger.  Every time I try to place 2 pictures next to each other, it either looks wonky or just does not work.  Am I doing something wrong?