Thursday, January 31, 2013

Meaningful Art: Teaching Value with Snowmen

Seasonal based activities are pretty irrelevant in California. We don't have fall (really), we don't get snow, and it is colder in the summer than in the spring (at least in San Francisco). That being said, I still enjoy the activities and when I saw this post on how to teach value with snowmen, I knew I had to try it.

The lesson focuses on two aspects of art: perspective and value. First, students draw the outline of a snowman. I told students to try to draw a snowman from a different perspective. They tried making a "close up" of their face, what the snowman would look like from above, from below. Some students got this immediately, others really struggled. In retrospect, I will teach that concept in an earlier lesson when I can focus just on playing around with this idea.

Drawing the outline of the snowman as if we are looking from below


Next, students did the shading to create the value with colored pencils. In order to do this, students must choose two colors next to each other on the color wheel, one lighter than the other. Then students shade the very edge of their snowmen with the dark color, pressing very hard. Next, they take that same darker color and shade inwards, but pressing lighter. Last, they take the lighter color and continue to shade inwards, pressing lightly. The lightest color shades pretty far into the snowman. This creates the pretty color of the snowmen.



Once they have finished shading, students added their details and backgrounds.



Again, I should have focused JUST on value with the students. It was a lot to take in and I think students would've been able to focus more on how to shade if they weren't already focusing on the perspective aspect. Still, I feel like the snowmen turned out really cute and the students were very proud of their work.






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