Blind Contour Spring Drawing

In Art, we have begun the exciting time of teaching lessons!  This is a great opportunity for us future teachers to get ideas to use in our own classroom someday!  The first lesson was presented by Maggie, Hilary, and Laurie.  Their lesson was called, "Blind Contour Spring Drawing," because when we drew our spring scene we did not look at the piece of paper.  On a 12x18 drawing paper, we took our white crayon and drew three flowers on it.  As we drew, we didn't look at the paper in order to perform "blind contour" drawing.  If we wanted to, we could add grass, a sun, clouds, birds, etc.  Once we were done drawing all the objects, we got to take a look at it.  Then we were to go over the white crayon lines again by pressing firmly to enhance it.  This will help later when we add the paint.  The next step was to take a paintbrush and brush over the entire drawing with water.  The water made the drawing ready for watercolor paints!  We were reminded to use warm and cool colors for our paint.  We discussed warm colors being, red, orange, and yellow.  We also talked about cool colors being, green, blue, and purple.  I painted my drawing with those colors and made it look "Spring-like!" :)  Once the drawing was all covered with paint, the markings made by the white crayon appeared through the paint!  What a great project to get us excited for Spring! :)

Extension Activity: For an extension activity, students would make an acrostic poem using the word "SPRING."  The students could write about what they do in the Spring or things that make them think of this season.  Their creativity would shine through as each poem would be different.  Once they are complete, I would hang them up in the classroom. :)