Kindergarten: Olivia

I adore how these drawings of Olivia came out! With some minimal charcoal smudges and red  pastel, students drew their own version of our lovable pig.

First-Second grade: Mary Blair's Giraffes

Mary Blair designed the concept art for It's a Small World ride at Disneyland, including many classic Disney animations and children books. We had a lot of fun drawing this one!

Kindergarten: Vessels and Arteries

Where art meets science! This was a project from summer camp during Science Week. Students learned about the heart, vessels, and arteries, that I tried to explain by describing our veins and arteries as subway trains.

Kindergarten: Charcoal Still Life

First grade: Drawings of Flowers

This was a rigorous lesson on color mixing using colored pencils.  Unlike mixing paint, colored pencils are mixed by adding multiple, even, layers. The preliminary step was to fill out a tertiary color wheel making sure to color inside the lines, mix colors evenly throughout a section, and layer their colors so they can produce a wide range of colors, not to mention bright saturated colors. Are you tired of the word "color" yet? ;)

Students chose a reference photo and sketched it out on drawing paper. I did multiple demonstrations on how to blend colors, layer colors, and emphasized how important it was that they really look closely at all the subtle color gradations. I tell students they can color in multiple directions (sometimes you have to!) as long as they blend them together in the end.  The drawings came out beautifully!

Second grade: Notre Dame Cathedral

Cathedral

Even something as complex as a Gothic cathedral can be learned by young children! We looked at David Macaulay's Cathedral drawing as well as a photograph of Notre Dame and simplified it into lines, arches, and patterns. I had them guess how many steps you had to climb to get to the top (387!) since Gothic architecture is characterized by its height and narrow structure. Students also learned basic architectural terms such as spire, rose window, and pointed arches.

Third and Fourth grade: Flowers in Oil Pastel

Inspired by Georgia O'keeffe's abstracted paintings, students studied and captured the beautiful forms of flowers. They used a viewfinder to find an interesting composition and executed it in oil pastel. Multiple layers of coloring and an observant eye made these drawings bold and captivating.