A big thanks to Art Lessons for inspiring this project. I find that some subjects are winners for all skill levels because they are easily recognizable no matter what the proportions (giraffes, peacocks, butterflies.. and now dragonflies come to mind.) As an added bonus, all my classes, boy/girl, k-3rd were excited about the subject matter. They were amazed to hear that while humans have one set of eye lenses, dragonflies have 30,000! After a simple direct line drawing lesson for the dragonfly, I asked the children to draw a large circle around their bug. I then asked them, no, begged them to resist the urge to draw "puny" little petals. "Let's draw "mega" or "giant" petals that go off the page. This is a hard concept for some younger children to grasp. After the line drawing was traced with permanent marker, they could choose oil pastel, marker or a combination of both to color their dragonfly and parts of the flower. Finally, they added watercolor to their background &/or petals.
OOH I love dragonflies so these are terrific. I'll have to post a photo of my car (there are dragonflies on it). I like the mega-petals and your approach. I think I'll try this!
ReplyDeleteMary this was a really successful project, love all the variations. Doogsl
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