Every year I teach 5th graders a bit about figure drawing. I usually start out by teaching kids the basics about gesture drawing with charcoal. We then move on to "circle and tube" drawing. I love Mona Brooks classic, Drawing with Children, for this project. Her illustrations are very helpful for students - allowing them to envision the human head as an egg form, the joints as circles and the long bones as tubes. I use this method to teach drawing the figure in several positions. Sometimes we also try out blind contour line drawing and contour line drawing. I use a variety of art materials for these drawings, and allow students to be models. They get to STAND ON THE TABLE! They love this!
Anyway, as a culmination of their figure drawing experience last year we did this project.
I started with small copies of a circle and tube figure that the kids cut out and cut apart at the joints. The kids then rearranged their figure. Some students made their figure dancing, kicking a soccer ball, doing jumping jacks, or cheering for the big game. I had them use the copy paper figure to make a sturdier, card stock figure stencil by tracing around their taped together original. The kids traced this, overlapping of course, onto a long piece of watercolor paper. Then comes the color wheel/ color mixing lesson. I pass out primaries, the kids choose a six color section of the color wheel and go to town. Some go above and beyond using all twelve colors on an accessory- in this case a basketball :) Last but not least, we splatter paint. I arrange boxes with lots of tempera paint colors to choose from and we use mop brushes made from small strips of felt, masking tape, and a Popsicle sticks to splatter with -obviously a one time use brush. What I like most about this project is that every student is successful.
