Lady Liberty with Fireworks

In honor of our recent Memorial Day and the upcoming 4th of July, I wanted to do a patriotic themed art project. I saw some great drawings of the Staue of Liberty on Artsonia and decided to do my version. I wanted to start with that wonderful green patina that her copper skin has from years of natural weathering. A combination of white, green and a touch of black gave me the results I was looking for on our pieces of bristol board. While this is not at all a hard direct line drawing to teach, the size of the head is important for the outcome. I offered a u shaped template to my K thru 3rd graders for this reason. From there it's just a step by step of simple line shapes that the children did with pencil. As you can see the results were very different from child to child. (This is a real priority for me when choosing an art lesson.) Lines were then gone over in black crayon or permanent marker. To show more of her weathering and 3 dimension, some children highlighted some lines with white oil pastel and smears of charcoal pencil.

Now onto the background. The fireworks were done on black construction paper with oil pastel. They created these with curved line shapes coming from the same center point. Every child seemed to enjoy finding their own personal style to create this colorful explosions. For a last touch, They flicked watered down white tempera paint using a tooth brush. (These pieces were beautiful enough on their own.) Finally Lady Liberty was cut out and glued to the dried background paper.

These 2 pieces were created by Kindergarten boys.