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INVENT AN INSECT

Materials:
• White drawing paper
• Crayons, colored pencils, or markers

What to do:
1. Pretend you're deep in a jungle when you spy a very big bug. It's an insect like none you've ever seen!

2. Is it a bug that skims the water on long legs? Does it fly or hop? Does it wiggle and crawl? Does it have fuzzy feelers? A stinger? Big, buggy eyes?

3. Draw your new find in color. Add lots of bits and pieces to it.

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DRAWING PROMPTS

FOR FAST FINISHERS

Elementary and middle school teachers need ready-to-use lessons that allow youngsters to work on their own with the adult as facilitator only. Below are a few tried and tested, meaningful tasks to engage the interest of the creative kid who finishes his work ahead of everyone else.

THE NUMBERS GAME

Sometimes numbers' shapes remind us of other things. The number 6 looks a bit like a cartoon eye, and the number 8 is a snowman.

Sketch several large numbers on paper and study them from different directions. What could they become? Use pencils or other drawing tools.

FABULOUS FOOTWEAR

Shoes make a great subject for drawing. Place your shoe (or a pair of them) on the desk or table. Look very closely at the shoe, following all the edges with your eyes.

With a pen or fine-tipped black marker on a large sheet of paper, draw all the lines and shapes you see on the shoe(s). Look back and forth many times between your paper and the shoe(s). Be sure to add all the details--the openings, seams, laces, and more.

HAND IT TO YOU!

Rest your hand on the desk (your left hand if you're right-handed) and not on the paper. Use a pen or fine-line marker to draw the outlines and edges of your hand--no tracing allowed! Look carefully at the hand and sketch all the lines you see, including the knuckles, the skin around the fingernails, and more.

ALTERED BOOKS AS A CLASSROOM

PROJECT

I love books, even old, cast-off volumes.

When I altered a few of them by gluing some of the pages together and painting on them, drawing, collaging, and much more, I learned how FUN it can be!

Hundreds of other websites exist which detail the steps involved in creating altered books. THIS site won’t go into the methods, but I do encourage teachers to try the project with their students.

Get obsolete books at garage sales or thrift shops at very little expense. Perhaps your local library gives them away. Do select hardcover books with sturdy binding and good quality pages that aren’t brittle.

Note: If your students are younger, consider altering old magazines instead. Elementary and middle school children can alter periodicals by first covering the pages with blank paper.

Ask your students to consider a theme, or assign a meaningful one yourself…make it an authentic, significant task.

There are many, many ways to transform a book into a new work of art. Make photomontages or paper mosaics, cut, sew, tear, weave, write as in a journal, use printmaking techniques and much more. What fun!

In the 2-page spread above, the artist added leather strips and even a few strands of a horse's mane!

Incorporate embellishments such as fibers, flat buttons or shells, ribbons, fabric, broken costume jewelry, cording, feathers, and lace.
Don’t forget the book’s cover: paint it or cover it in tissue papers, maps, sheet music and more.

A Faster Method
Instead of one book per student, try a “round robin” in which one book is completed by the entire class. One student completes a two-page spread and then sends the book on to the next person in the group to alter another spread. Give each student a specific amount of time to complete his or her part of the book before sending it to the next person.

ON THE CUTTING EDGE

This lesson in positive and negative space utilizes good old paper and glue. It’s a project for many levels of ability, and the finished works have graphic impact.

To begin, I hold up a tightly clenched fist and discuss with the class the solidity of it compared with a splayed hand (with the fingers spread apart).

I tell the students that the air between the fingers of the latter is like the negative space we’ll use in our designs.

Give each young artist a piece of black or dark colored paper (I use 9x12”) and a larger sheet for the background (I use 12x18” white or light colored paper). The two must be extremely contrasty for greatest effect.

Then I demonstrate how the dark rectangle can be transformed into a far more interesting shape. I cut curves or zigzag angles around the edges, wasting very little paper. Be sure to remind your students to keep the new shape large.

Next, to demonstrate the concept of expansion, show the class how to cut the large solid shape into three parts. You might ask the kids to arrange the three sections on their background sheet in order, like puzzle pieces that fit together.

Note: To avoid any possible confusion that might arise when you view the four examples shown directly below, I must clarify: They are STAGES in development of a single design.

The next step is to expand, in turn, each of the three shapes. Cut one of them into smaller pieces—again, arranging them in order. After that, divide up another of the larger shapes, but in another manner or in a different direction! Be sure to use variety in width or size. When the third and final shape has been sliced and diced, the real fun begins.

Encourage the students to discard a few boring pieces, to cut holes in others, and to arrange them on the background paper with a diversity of white spaces between the bits. The white or light colored paper is part of the design, and it should show between each dark piece.

Finally, before the young artists glue down their final arrangement, they should be sure they have achieved a unified, balanced design.

This simple but effective activity is quite inexpensive. You might even call it cut-rate!

FISH, NAMELY

This lesson incorporates shapes, contours, and patterns. It’s best for middle-schoolers or younger students. All you need are white paper, a pencil, and a black marker or felt pen.

First sketch the outline of a fish (its CONTOUR). Then fit your name inside, drawing the letters as fat shapes, not single lines. Try all capitals and fill the fish to its edges. See Jill's example, above.

Next, use your black ink to outline the fish and your name. Then invent your own patterns to fill the spaces in between and around the letters. Some of your patterns might be very tiny lines and/or shapes, close together. Others might be larger, farther apart, even drawn in a different direction. Leave the letters of your name white inside, for good contrast against the “busy” patterns. When things CONTRAST, they are different from each other, not alike.

Teachers can adapt this activity, too. For example, fit a name into the shape of a butterfly during a unit on butterflies.

Be sure to see our archives for more art lesson ideas.