In the Art Room: Super Hero Selfies

So I've been teaching for almost a million years and I'm not afraid to say that I don't love everything about teaching art. There are some things that got me all feelin' like this when I'm teaching...

 And got my students doing all this cuz they just...can't...

My two least fave thangie-muhgies are teaching figure drawing and perspective. In no particular order of distaste. I'm an equal opportunity dis-liker. 

So, what did I decide to do? Put both things together into one lesson. Because two negatives make a positive, right? Turns out they do in this case as the kids loved this Super Hero Selfie lesson!

This big fat hairy project involved color theory, wax resist, scratch-art paper making, perspective drawing, figure drawing and, finally, the creation of a super hero selfie. I decided to create a video for y'all to view on your own or share with your students. Because each phase of this project might take a class period, I broke this video up into bite sized pieces. So that you can easily find the individual lesson, I've added a header to the video. This way, if you are running a flipped classroom, you can simply have your students move on to the next clip!

 Just to break it down for you:

• Day One: The students used 12" X 18" pieces of paper, oil pastels and either warm or cool watercolor paint. I like to use 80 lbs white paper.
• Day Two: We made our scratch art paper! For this, I've found oil pastel works best. Also, when the students go to paint, use slightly diluted black tempera paint. I love Sax Versa Temp paint. We used 12" X 12" squares for this.
• Day Three: Wooden skewers and templates were used. I had a variety of those shapes you saw in the video for the kids to trace. Many kids struggled with the idea of having the windows go back into space. So we watched a couple of videos and practiced on dry erase boards until we got it.
• Day Four: We drew the kids in action in P.E.! Once we returned to the art room after about 10 minutes of gesture sketching, we used mannequins to create our own super hero pose. Lines were traced over with Sharpie.
• Day Five: We started finishing our super heroes, adding color with colored pencil and creating our compositions. This entailed cutting out the buildings and arranging them in a pleasing way with our hero. Early finishers wrote stories about their heroes!

Now with our snow days, my jury duty and holidays, we've really been on the struggle bus to finish these. Mostly because the kids have really gotten into it! They keep getting more elaborate with their heroes, adding side kicks, villains and costumes. 

I love that each phase of this project introduced them to something new.

Here's a peek after the their day. Homemade scratch paper isn't perfect as it sometimes comes off in flakes. But having made it as a kid, I wanted my students to have the same experience. 

Gesture drawing the kids in P.E. was a big hit. It really loosened up the kids and helped them have more interesting poses for their super heroes.

The wooden mannequins were also helpful. You can see this student's original drawing in pencil under her Sharpie'd lines. I love the sidekick!

Check out that pose! I can't take credit, this student draws a lot and is very talented. Not to mention, a big Star Wars fan!

Once together, the kids wrote stories that had funny and elaborate names for their heroes. 

And for once, perspective and figure drawing had me and my students all...

 What are some of your fave perspective and figure drawing lessons? Do you have some tips and tricks? I'd love to hear about 'em as I'm always in need of some help...aren't we all?

Also! Many of you have asked about my videos: how I make them, what equipment I use, etc. I'll be sharing that in a blog post this week so stay tuned!