Royal Self-Portraits with Kindergarten

Day One: We review shapes and lines. First we draw our crown. I made these crown templates for the kids who want to use them...but they can take the art challenge and draw themselves if they choose. 

Next we walk through the steps of drawing a face one at a time at the demo. I draw on my paper, they watch and then go echo on their paper. It keeps everything in order! 

The look pretty great! Next they outline with black oil pastel and then the next art class we paint with tempera cakes. 

Day Two: Painting our Royal Faces

I briefly discuss skin tones...we dive into skin tones in 1st grade..so this is a just a pre-cursor to that conversation. 

We are using tempera cakes...which are so messy!! But it's the easiest thing to use for all the color choices they need. 

Here is the "GLITTER STATION"...am I crazy? Yes. 

I instruct them to draw some lines with glue on the crown only. Several kids must not have heard me saying a thousand times, CROWN ONLY....because the second I turn around there's glue everywhere! But hey, it's kindergarten....so ya know. 

After they draw their glue lines, I sprinkle on loads of glitter and shake it off onto that black piece of paper that has been folded to create a crease. That crease is important! After you shake it off, you can just funnel the glitter back into the container...

***Thanks to Patty @ deepspacesparkle for this lesson. This is my second year using this fun lesson. Here's the link: http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/2011/11/16/royal-kinder-portraits/

City at Night....2nd Grade

City at Night: Vincent van Gogh inspired Cityscape

Day One:
We talk about Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" and paint a van Gogh inspired background. These always turn out really beautiful. I do a tray of six cups of tempera: blue, purple, black, white, turquoise and silver.

Day Two:
We start to add buildings and windows.

Day Three:
Adding lots more windows and architectural details. Last year we added a road and cars in honor of Artober: Red Grooms.

To glue down the road, I pre-chop some gray paper...9x18 into chunks, they put a line of glue at the top of the gray and simply lay the cityscape over it so that the road attaches to the back. I make them figure this out at the demo table. 

How are we going to attach our road and not cover up our buildings?

 I demonstrated how to make a taxi and this clever artist said there are van taxis too.