Peacock Paintings by 3rd Grade

These fabulous paintings are going in our upcoming February student art show....but here's a sneak peek!

This is a 3 day project for 3rd graders...but could be done with 2nd or 4th. 

Day One: We discussed the differences between Peacocks and Peahens. The boys love hearing that the girls are drab and plain looking while the boys are colorful and vibrant. I have this great video I show of a peacock trying to catch a snake...http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Indian_Peafowl

We draw the peacock's body, beak, talons and the first row of metallic feathers. I let the kids paint everything with different shades of gold paint. 

Day Two: We draw about 20 "eyes of the gods" in black oil pastel then use cool colors to paint them.

Day Three: We paint the rest of the plumage with cool colors and add lines with oil pastels. They cut out their eyes of the gods and collage them around the painting. These are awesome! 

 I encourage a lot of creativity when painting the feathers. They can aim for realistic feathers or make them really abstract. They also experiment with some color mixing....different types of brush techniques...mixed media things are happening and it's great.

Peacock Resources

Amsel, Sheri. “How to Draw Birds.” Peacock Drawing Lesson. Exploring Nature Educational Resource. © 2005 - 2013. April 21, 2013. <http://exploringnature.org/db/detail.php?dbID=46&detID=2884>


How to Draw a Peacock:

Peacock Paintings

I did this project last year with my 2nd graders and I loved it. So here we are again. This is day one of the project...discussing Indian Peacocks, Penhens and Peafowls. We practice drawing a peacock in our Idea Books and then we draw the body and first set of feathers on blue 9x18 paper. We painted the peacock and the metallic feathers. Next class we will make the "eyes of the gods"/concentric circles and we'll paint the base color for our feather on the blue paper. 

This project is inpsired by Patty at DeepSpaceSparkle.com and here's the link to her project for 1st grade: 

http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/?s=peacocks

Here's some great links for Peacock Info...and a video to show. 

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/peacock/

http://kids.sandiegozoo.org/animals/birds/peacock

Here's a great video that kids really enjoyed: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Indian_Peafowl

Here's a great photo for the first day...

Day Two : Painting the eyes of the gods and some background feathers. 

Adding the eyes of the gods....here's a class that has run out of time for this project so on their Day Two I had them draw the eyes of the gods on their paper and paint directly on the blue. The other classes collaged their eyes of the gods from other paper. Both ways work, the collage looks best!