Zooming in on Animals (5th)

Keeping with the animal theme of the other grade levels, 5th graders worked on showing visual texture using animals as our subject matter. I have these great memories of having ZooBooks as a kid and the amazing pictures in them, so I wanted to use those as our image sources rather than printing off pictures that were not high quality or 1,000,000,000 of the same animal. Lucky for me our school libraries have them :)

The initial idea for this project came from this post via pinterest.I wanted it to be less about point of view and more about using color pencils at a higher level. This project REALLY showed different skill levels of my students within a class and across the different buildings. I can see some future artist starting to really develop and it is so exciting!

I CAN Statement for this project: I CAN show visual texture of animals using colored pencils to the best of my ability.

Day 1: Intro to texture (I really hope for most of my students it was more like a review...they really should know what texture is by 5th grade) I showed them three slides from part of an elements and principles PowerPoint I have just on texture. Our main topic was real texture versus visual texture. We started with an exercise of doing "swatches" of different textures that have to be approved before starting on the project. Here is my example of that...

Before they started working I showed them how to use the view finders and to draw the main lines/sections in pencil first before starting with colored pencils. I had 5x7 rectangles for them to trace on their paper so they knew the size they were working with. I was really surprised when I ran into students who struggled with the concept of transferring what was in the view finder to fit the size of the box. That has got to be some Piaget stuff happening...  

Day 2: Workday, reminded and reviewed how to get different textures and using pencil first!
Day 3: Workday and for those that were done and ready to assemble...They chose what color they wanted and cut out and arranged their drawings and made labels where the animal and part of the animal they drew was written.
Day 4: Shape Animal Challenge for early finishers and final assembling.

I really had some stragglers with this project...but alas they are all done!

These two were selected for the art show!

Jefferson Elementary...

Kennedy Elementary...

McDill Elementary...

This display was so fun to do!