it was a dark and stormy night on casey street.

We have had some extreme weather for San Diego the past week. Hail and rain! 

I recently discovered the work of Julien Colombier. He makes drawings on black surfaces- paper, canvas, plaster walls. I love his sense of touch. How he manipulates light and dark with shifts in his hand pressure. It's also interesting to see how his vocabulary of images repeats, varies, and evolves as he produces each drawing. 

One of his drawings was a great fit for the stormy weather we have been experiencing. It's called ZZtop Apocalypse. "Charger" bolts, shading, and perspective? Score.

I shared images from Julien's website with each class and discussed his use of light and dark to make things look 3d. We talked about what you have to do to make dark and light values on black paper instead of white paper. (You reverse your usual process- press had for light and soft for dark on black.)

I then shared ZZtop. I focused on light and dark, and I also introduced the concept of one point perspective. Julien used it to make the house look like they were lined up on a real street. This was their first lesson in perspective this year.  I think this image is a great intro to the concept because it is simple enough for many students to achieve success.

I told the students we would be making a drawing together based on this particular image and then I shared a short video of Julien working. The students LOVED the video. Some didn't love the music, but they really enjoyed seeing Julien work. Student engagement in full effect:)

We then drew out the lightning image together. I modeled the perspective, lightning bolts, and coloring shapes. The visual vocab of the finished drawings are similar, but the visual variations are very interesting too.

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:)