My fifth and sixth grade students have been working with chalk pastel recently. We’ve done tropical birds and just finished these stunning rainforest animals. Watch the video (link at bottom of post) to see the kids at work.
To begin, use a black oil pastel to draw a rainforest animal. I provided a few simple drawing demonstrations to get the kids started. Draw lightly at first, then trace over all the “good” lines with a darker line.
Using chalk pastels, color in everything. I like to start with the animal because it’s the most exciting, but it really doesn’t matter. Use one finger to smudge the colors all the way to the black oil pastels.
After everything is colored in with chalk, grab the black oil pastel again and trace all lines. This is the step that makes the biggest impact.
Look at this lime green frog? Isn’t she pretty?
This is my baby girl’s sloth. Okay, she’s not a baby, but still. Isn’t this the most darling sloth ever?
A leopard…or a cheetah. Hmmm. I can’t remember. Probably a leopard given that we’re talking rainforest.
Love this adorable orangutan. Did I spell that right?
Here’s a kid who loves color almost as much as me.
And finally, a super, sizzling snake!
Here’s the complete video! (click on the triangle)
They look fantastic! Love the variety and color! Thanks for posting.
Beautiful! I taught a similar lesson plans to 4th graders. They had to copy color photos of animals from old calendars in chalk pastel. Some turned out beautiful! Other kids really struggled. Did you do a directed draw or use reference photos?
I didn’t do a directed line drawing. I posted a variety of animal pictures on the white board and then each student picked their favorite. This is hard to do. Not every child will be successful unless you can provide some basic instruction. I used some of my how-to-draw handouts from my PDF art booklets to help guide the kids when I couldn’t get to them.
I try really hard to have kids start with basic shapes first and then build up the details and erase any extra lines. This takes lots of patience and practice. With younger students, I tend to only pick one animal that we all draw. They end up looking different anyway. The older students usually get more choices since they have had more drawing experience. I still usually pick only one animal to demonstrate so they get the idea.
What kind of chalk pastels did you use for htis? They are gorgeous.
Where is the video???
click on the blue type “Rainforest Animals”. It’s the last sentence in the post.
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