3rd & 4th Grade - Contour Drawings

Contour - continues line - drawings are a great way to learn about proportion, detail... and getting over the fear of "ugly drawings". 

Day one of contour drawings students do "blind contours" - where they aren't looking at their paper at all - just the object they are drawing -  in our case, hands. 

I had the kids put their sketchbooks inside paper grocery bags to prevent any sneaky peakers... and create a hilarious moment of reveal when we all took our drawings out of the bag at the same time. 

"Ugly drawings" were made by all... and strength in numbers made it okay - and took away the fear of having a drawing not turning out as good as someone else's. We grew to love our ugly drawings, and embrace their differences and pay attention to how much detail we could capture in each one. 

And you know what happened to our beloved ugly drawings the more of them we made... they became beautifully detailed sophisticated drawings... and we were also okay with that! 

Students each chose 4-5 of their favorite drawings to transfer using graphite paper. 

We then drew 2 horizontal and two vertical lines to break up the empty space and used watercolor to paint the background. 

And here we have it!

6th Grade - Tunnel Books

After learning about Keith Haring, 6th grade created drawings in his style... and then made these awesome tunnel books. This project evolved as it went on as we loosely kept the true definition of a tunnel book - a visual book where pages are bond together with accordion folds.

Students chose a theme for their book - swimming, Dr. Who, dance, Harry Potter, Ninjago... and a few other ideas based on animated cartoons that I hadn't heard of, but I'm sure are really awesome as well.

A lot of great problem solving took place during this project as students worked through design challenges to creatively assemble their books. 

...We used a LOT of glue sticks and binder clips. 

We were happy with the results, they are each so unique. 

One thing I've noticed while they have been on display in the hallway is that as people look at them, they need to spend several minutes with each one to fully take in all of the different aspects of each book.

We like it when art makes you stop and think!!