I love using gouache and have been using it for my personal work for many years but have never used it with my students. Last summer, I took a workshop for art teachers. One of the instructors, Britt Curley, shared this project, painting kingfisher birds in gouache. I was so excited about the possibilities of […]
Back in December (Yes, I am behind in posting!), we had a Christmas Workshop. It was a lot of fun, but the holidays kept me so busy, I am just now getting around to sharing the projects. For the main project, I decided to have students illustrate a partridge in a pear tree. We sang […]
With their distinct bright red coloring, cardinals make a wonderful subject for an art project. Since I have a wide variety of ages in my classes right now, I taught two different versions of this lesson. For the younger students, I did a guided directed drawing for the cardinal. The older students drew from photographs […]
Our first project of the school year was based on John James Audubon. We began by reading The Boy Who Drew Birds. This book tells the story of John James Audubon and his fascination with birds. I found a great coloring book with line drawings of Audubon’s bird paintings. The line drawings in the coloring […]
I knew students would be finishing their projects at different times this week. Some would need a short project to fill the hour. Fellow art teacher, Carol Cormier, shared this project. I knew it would be just perfect! Students first drew a tree with some leaves, then cut shapes from various papers. They glued these […]
The last two weeks, we have been working on a painting/collage of birds in cherry blossom trees. I loved that this project taught skills, like applying a graded wash with watercolor, while allowing for a lot of creativity. We started by painting a bright sunset in watercolor. Then, we created “blob” birds on a separate […]
Yesterday, we finished our tropical birds. These were drawn with Sharpie and painted in puck tempera. The foliage was painted on a separate sheet and added as a collage element. The final touch was spraying yellow and blue liquid watercolor. This project was inspired by Denise Logan’s book, Dynamic Art Projects for Children. These were […]
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