Oh, Charley.

Be still my beating heart. A few years ago I got a giant book of Charley Harper artwork for father's day. I was blown away by the sheer amount of brilliant work the man produced in his lifetime. Thousands of remarkable images. The ways that he interpreted the natural world into geometric shapes that are clean and sharp astound me.

I try to do at least one project based on his work every year. This year I chose a bird and it's reflection print to do a 2nd grade project with. It was a collage that had drawn lines added to add a bit of texture and movement. The results across 10 classes were consistently of high quality. One of those projects that kids hit out of the park.

I emphasized his use of geometric shapes to make animals more abstract in style.

1. Introduce Charley and his images of nature done in an abstract style. discuss the use of collage to create our version of his image
2. students get 2 equal size rectangles of paper. the same color, but one is a tint of the other
3. draw the bird shape on one rectangle- a simple raindrop and triangle
4. cut shapes out with 2nd sheet underneath, so you get 2 drops & 2 triangles
5. position first bird shape on black paper and glue down
6. take thin gray rectangle- 1x9", glue down so that it overlaps tail/triangle  of bird shape
7. position and glue down 2nd bird shape so it overlaps slightly the 1st bird shape
8. cut U shape out of black paper for face of bird and glue in place on 1st bird
9. cut small orange triangle for beak of 1st bird and glue in place
10. add black crayon dots for eyes and add repeated lines with crayon color that matches bird, so that it appears the bird's wings are flapping