Name Line Designs

These are a fun creation by our 1st grade artists. They started with very tall letters that stretched from the top to the bottom of their paper. Next came crayon line designs in all of the spaces created by their name. Lastly students painted a watercolor resist over each section!

4th Grade Colors Wheels

4th Grade created 8 section color wheels. They cut them into radial designs and then topped them off with black line design patterns onto each section. The look gorgeous!

LINE, DESIGN & ILLUSION

This is a lesson I have done with 4th grade. They create an illusion using a combination of lines, shapes and color patterns. The students can opt to use things like letters in their illusion as well. We study Escher and a few other illusion puzzles with this lesson.

SHOE SKETCHES

This is a lesson I do with 5th grade. We start the unit by taking about how important skethcing is to an artist. We talk about realism and what it means in terms of art styles. Then we create sketch books that have 3 sketches of the same think be do a sketch, a contour, and a blind contour drawing of something like an apple. We learn that sketching lines are to determine the best way to draw a subject (lines that can be erased). Contour lines are about the outline or contour of a subject, these lines are very quick and not detailed. Then we do a blind contour, this is always fun, but I teach my students that the point is practice and the way that you arm flows when it hits the paper. The culminating project is using sketching lines and realism to create a 3 point sketch of your own shoe. We do the side first, then the front and lastly the back. We also learn about how a table line inpacts a drawing and we build on the shading skills we learned in 4th grade from the shapley shading lesson. Overall the students enjoyed this because the explaination and practive of how to sketch allowed them to be successful at drawing something realistically. When we feel successful at something we seem to like it:)

Lines, Lines, Everywhere Are Lines

This lesson has students study a picture and pick out varieties of lines. The students then go on a line hunt: they create a journal of lines then scout inside the school on one page and outside on another, copying the lines that they see. Then when we return to class the students take turns drawing a line on the board. We see who "hunted" out the most lines. The second day of the lesson students use popsickle sticks and tempera paint to create an abstract line painting.
This lesson takes approx. 2 4o minute classes. The hunt is good for kinesthetic learners and gets students active. They can use their line journal to help them while painting. They can try new things like swirling the stick to make blended lines. I really liked this lesson, my students were interested and they all turned out very well.