cloud city.

This week the 3rd graders are using an illustration by Dinara Mirtalipova to learn about line and 3d space in art. They are familiar with Dinara's work because they did a project inspired by another illustration of hers last year.

Dinara's work is full of whimsy. I like how she flattens and stylizes her shapes, but through overlapping and size changes, she maintains a sense of recognizable space. I like sharing her work with my students because of the fictional touches she adds to many of her images.

I started the lesson by having students read our focus of the day aloud- today I am.., So that I can..., and I'll know I've got it when... We then looked at the image from last year to review Dinara's work and how she creates 3d space, and then we looked at our focus image for this lesson.

 

3rd grade focuses on the understanding and creation of 3d space, so I had students identify what parts represented the foreground, middleground, and background. We discussed how Dinara used size change, overlapping, detail, and color to separate the different layers. We also looked around the room for other examples of 3d space in outdoor scenes. 

Students used their small dry erase boards to practice drawing a person from behind, and to lay out their own fictional cityscapes. They referred to these as they drew out their final compositions on brown paper. I asked that the students only use color on the main character and ladder and that everything else was drawn in white. Students were required to create 3 different layers through color, size change, and having less detail in the background. Students made individual choices about their main character, cloud drawing, and background elements.

meow... i mean RAWR!

The second lesson the 2nd graders did again focused on their use of contour line to define shapes. Since we are only a couple weeks from Halloween (how has THAT possible already?) I thought it would be fun to do a project based on an illustration by Dinara Mirtalipova.

After sharing what Dinara had written about herself on her website and looking at the accompanying photo/drawing of her, the students came to the conclusion that Dinara is a little bit silly:) We looked at several of her illustrations and identified her use of contour lines and patterns. The Jennifer Mercede project from last week had addressed both of these concepts. The students got a big kick out of her crocodile image and her bird on top of a monkey on top of an elephant design.

We also looked at how some shapes in her illustrations covered up parts of other ones. She used overlapping to create some 3d space in her work.

The image that was our focus is called 'My Inner Monster". I only showed the monster shadow part first. After the kids shared what could be making such a shadow I scrolled down further so they could see the little kitty.

The students were very excited to be doing a drawing based on this. I stressed that we would be building some of the drawing together, but that the design of the monster shadow was up to them. This got a bunch of hoorays in each class.

We identified some overlapping parts, patterns, and a few contour lines. A number of students also pointed out that the shadow did NOT have a contour line around it. Awesome.

We drew out the cat, pillow, rug, and floor line together. I modeled how to make some picture frames, clocks, book shelves and open doors and let the students add what they wanted to their interior setting.

When we did the rug I stressed the importance of using diagonals for the sides, so that the rug looked like it was laying down and not standing up like a fence. I decided to add the door element to again address depth with diagonal lines. Many kids included this feature. Did the door lead outside? to a dark or light room?

Students traced a few of the parts in the front to make them stand out a bit more and then added color to the different parts of the drawing. Just like the giraffe picture last week, students were asked to create light and dark areas by pressing soft or hard with their crayons.

The monster shadow was the last element we put in. I emphasized that it was important to attach the shadow to the cat and/or pillow. We all did that step together. What they drew on the wall was up to them. The only thing I pointed out was that they could only show an open mouth if the shadow was in profile. If their monster was facing us then we would not see it's mouth in it's shadow.

They colored the shadow in softly so that elements that got covered by it were not totally lost in the final drawing.

The second graders had a lot of fun with this project and they are off to a great start in art this year:)