Art Lessons for Kids
This is part three of my quest for determining the best medium for primary portraits. Last week my first grade students created beautiful oil pastel portraits, then another first grade class created their portraits using chalk pastels. Today, my final first grade class used my favorite medium:tempera paints. Tempera paint has always been one of my favorite [...]
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This is part two of my quest for determining the best medium for primary portraits. Last week my first grade students created beautiful oil pastel portraits. I love oil pastels as they are super easy for prep and clean-up but on the downside, they require a great deal of patience. Little ones don’t often have [...]
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Portraits are the quintessential elementary art project and for good reason–they are adorable and a keepsake that every parent appreciates. But some portrait lessons are better than others. It’s fascinating to me why some lessons work while others don’t. I’ve been teaching for a while now, so I have a fairly solid understanding on what techniques [...]
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Continuing along with my Fairy Tale Royals art unit, fourth grade students used the classic double-loading paintbrush technique and drawing with black paint to create these stunning Fairy Tale Royals. Starting Off To begin, hand each student a piece of 12″ x 18″ white drawing/construction paper. Place small tubs of black liquid tempera paint (mixed with [...]
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My Kinder students created adorable kinder portraits with an added twist…crowns! It gave me the opportunity to break out my jars of glitter and allow my smallest students to express themselves through line and color (and a bit of sparkle!). Drawing the Portraits The process is pretty simple and requires few art supplies. Give each [...]
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How cute are these? My kinder classes traced oval templates, drew in their eyes, neck and shoulders then embarked on a painting adventure. They painted their faces and necks first, their tops next and backgrounds last. Set aside to dry. Next class, paint eyes, nose and mouth. Add hair and voila! A beautiful self portrait!
As a creative warm-up and to practice making thick, thin and expressive lines, I introduced the sixth grade art rotation with Emotion Portraits. I found this idea on Flickr from one of my favorite art teachers Artsy T. Her flickr site is fantastic and her style of projects is nothing less than inspirational. (Here is [...]
My fifth grade students at Brandon School have been working very hard on these dynamic portraits for three weeks. Yesterday, most finished. I’m so proud of their work!The finishing steps require attentive students and these children did a marvelous job of doing just that. You can find a complete tutorial in my “Fun with Portraits” [...]
The quintessential art lesson for elementary school: self-portraits! This 24-page lesson plan booklet includes six easy portrait ideas. Easy-to-follow steps, supply lists, full-color photo-tutorials, original Deep Space Sparkle handouts and student galleries included. The Portrait Lessons includes: Matisse-Inspired Portrait for early elementary: Using oil pastels, kids draw a simple self-portrait following either a directed line drawing [...]
I love these first grade self portraits. They embodied everything kids art should be…colorful, whimsical and adorable. I used plain white construction/drawing paper and good old oil pastels. Trick is not to give the kids a pencil. Instead, we started with a black oil pastel and ended with a black oil pastel. I think this is [...]
I found this lesson over at Art Project for Kids. It’s a fantastic lesson; easy, quick and beautiful. I chose to do this with my 6th grade students but it would be equally successful with as young as fourth grade. Check out the link above for full directions. For more portrait lesson ideas, check out [...]
I think these are the cutest portraits ever. I’ve tried many different lessons to get little five and six year old kids to create a self-portrait, and this one is my favorite. Step One: I start with an oval template and instruct the children to trace onto skin tone colored construction paper. Then, we trace [...]
Paper portraits are yet another fun and easy way to create portraits for your students. Although this project is simple and fun, there are certain steps the children must do along with the teacher in order for the project to be successful. This project usually takes two, 45-minute class periods, perhaps allowing some extra time [...]
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After teaching art for four years, and being a creative person, I’m always trying to come up with some new twists on some perennial favorites. The first grade self portrait is one such project. I wanted the kids to not only focus on what they look like but to image themselves in the future. To answer [...]
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What fun the first grade kids at Foothill School had making these Picasso self-portraits. This lesson was a fun substitute to making regular, serious faces. First, the kids looked at pictures of Picasso’s portraits (Portrait of Marie-Therese and Portrait of Dora Maar) and studied the shapes and patterns Picasso used. They loved Picasso’s way of [...]
