stripes aren't just for zebras.

The second 3rd grade project this year is the first lesson I did that came from my interest in pinterest. Somebody posted it and I saved it to my "super cool art lessons" board. I am loving pinterest! It's such a great way to visually collect things that you want to reference later.

This French artist goes by "Speakerine" and is real name is Florent Bodart. I like his combination of realistic silhouettes and repetitive design to fill these shapes. The class and I looked at a number of images from his website and we discussed how Speakerine uses contour lines to make shapes and patterns, but then uses implied lines to describe the shapes in the image.

The students could choose any creature to base their design on. I did a number of examples on the board and I emphasized the importance of making their positive shapes big enough. If not, there would be too much negative space and the image would not be as successful because of that.

1. students drew out their creatures (if too small they started over or added another creature to fill more of the negative space)
2. students added light lines to the positive shape/s to create stripes
3. students filled the stripes with patterns using silver marker and construction paper crayons

The lesson was a good extension of the line lesson they did the week before, and it allowed more artistic license for them in the type of natural shape they wanted to use as their subject/positive shape.