kings, queens and the other dude

to wrap up our middle ages unit students either turned a photo of themselves or an imaginary king, queen or jack/joker/"other dude" (that will make sense in a few photos) in a playing card.

This year I agreed to let students draw a person if they really didn't like their own photo. This lead to a mixed bag of results...from playing cards where you can easily ID the student to some cartoon like people.
(this is really cool when you can see the detail...click to enlarge)

In the future I will do this project earlier in the year when the kids have more patience. I feel a lot of the work is cute but could have been better executed. As I've mentioned I'm having a really, really, hard time motivating my current 6-8th class to do the level of work I know they are capable of.
(good example...except why is his neck yellow?)

Anyway if you would like to do this project first print a photo of each student and have them trace the contours of their face/shoulders with a markers directly onto the photo or have them draw a head and shoulders of a person. (This was a good review of contour line drawing) Then have the student add accessories that make their person (or self) more regal. Crowns, scepter, capes, fancy clothes... spears....
(the "other dude...a palace guard I believe)


then using a tracing method of your choice (we used some carbon paper I found) trace the image onto a large sheet of paper 2 times. Make sure to flip and center the image for the second tracing.

go over your lines with sharpie and then add color using the media of your choice. I asked students to stick the primary colors and black, white and brown. Some followed that direction and some didn't.
(even in cartoon her sassy personality shows through;)
Last add the Q or K or J and the suit of your card in the upper and lower corner and mount the finished work on black paper.
part of the assignment was mixing the paint or colored pencils to match each students skin color...not easy when you have over 20+ nationalities in your school
rock on! I'm the king!
shy in real life and shy in her drawing

No matter how basic the drawing these look great in the hall and are getting positive reviews form the staff around the school. Just a fun twist on a self portraiture project.

dragons, dragons, dragons

After a few months I have found my camera battery charger so now I can update my blog again! So let's go back about 7 weeks and remember my 6th-8th graders were look at medieval art. First we made our cool foil illuminated letters and next came a classic medieval mythical creature...the dragon. We looked at some medieval art with dragons and other mythical creatures and talked about their religious and cultural symbolism in medieval art.



After some time with guided drawings and how to draw sheets we created dragons in icy caves (a project influenced by a lesson from the book Dynamic Art Lessons for Children.



The dragons were colored with either metallic tempera paint, markers or colored pencils. Then the dragons were cut out and glued onto black construction paper and added a cave made from watercolor markers brushed with clear water.

aside from the one girl who throws a fit unless she gets to do the project "HER way!"

some were fierce
and some were cute
The big kids ended up liking their dragons and the K-5's adore them and are constantly choosing their favorite. Oh and we looked at a few photos from the movie How to Train your Dragon for some ideas, I guess my middle school students love the movie! Next up king, queen and joker playing cards.