Pastel Dinos

I like for my students to be able to experiment with different art materials, or media.  One such medium is pastel.  There are oil pastels and soft pastels, and the students learn the proper way to use each of these.  They also learn different techniques for blending colors.

One project using this medium is my "Pastel Dinos" project.  The students use a black oil pastel to draw a dinosaur.  They were allowed to make up their own dinosaur, using their creativity to add any details they thought their dino should have.  They had to add a horizon line so that their dino was standing on the ground instead of floating in the middle of the paper.  Next step, adding color.

The kiddos used soft pastels to add color to their imaginary dinos.  They learned that you have to be very easy with these pastels--they are called soft pastels because they are soft.  They blended colors and used their fingers to smudge the pastel, being careful not to smudge the black oil pastel into the colorful soft pastels.

This year, I did this project with first and second grades.  Here are some first grade projects:

Kristen C.

Alli H.

Kaleb T.

Morgan K.

Addie W.

Here are some of the 2nd grade projects:

Walker M.

Charlee E.

Sarah T.

Carleigh M.

Mary-Claire W.

Cityscape Textures

Texture is one of the Elements of Art, things that make up almost every work of art. Texture is the way something feels when you touch it--rough, smooth, soft, sticky. Texture is everywhere.

In art, there are two different kinds of texture: real texture and visual texture. Real texture is texture that you can actually feel. Visual texture is texture that you can see, but not feel. One example of visual texture would be a rock in a painting. The rock may look like a real rock, and you may be able to see the texture of the rock, but when you touch it, it will not feel like a rock.

The first graders made a cityscape drawing and then used plastic texture plates to add visual texture to their drawings.

Here are a few student examples:

Jasley B.

Mitchell F.

Andrew H.

Luke H.

Caroline T.

Rachel T.