Happy Halloween!

"Abstract Jacks" was one of my favorite lessons from last year, so I brought it my new school. I realized Friday afternoon that today is Halloween, so I quickly pulled a few designs from each class and hung them outside of the cafeteria. Two teachers stopped by while hanging up the work, one to say I need to go home, its Friday afternoon, the other to say she loved these, how did we do it?

Well, first we drew a few carved pumpkin designs. Then I told the kids the legend of Stingy Jack (or at least the History Channel version) who is reported to be walking around with a lantern made from a hollowed out turnip until Judgement day, hence Jack o'lantern. We tied in some social studies talking about how Irish immigrants brought the legend and the tradition to the US. However here, pumpkins are more plentiful than turnips.

From there, we talked about creating emphasis through placement and how to turn our designs into something abstract by zooming in. We drew right over or pumpkin designs to find something interesting, then began outlining with chalk on the black paper.

The next class, we did an observational drawing of a real little pumpkin, under 15 minutes, using contour line and calling attention to using value and intermediate color to create the illusion of form. We reviewed some of the goals and did a "sandwich critique" with a partner (I got that idea from Artful Artsy Amy) Finally, we took out the pastels and finished!

of course there was a mustache!

The photos are not the best... I am not in practice using my new-ish camera, but you get the idea.