4.20.2012

fifth grade naturalists

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
-Henry David Thoreau

Each fifth grade artist used one of his/her own photographs taken on our photography field trip to the beautiful Missouri Botanical Gardens to use as inspiration for a drawing, ceramic sculpture, and painting. This is a rigorous exercise in observation and perspective! It is also a wonderful way to experiment in different mediums to discover new strengths and work with challenges.


For the drawing portion of this project, students learned how to make a value chart and show roundness of form using shading, highlights, and shadow with special 2H-6B drawing pencils. They chose to render their full photograph, a portion of the photograph, or to abstract the photograph.



























9 comments:

Lise said...

Wow. Those drawings are spectacular!

Mary said...

These are so impressive! 5th grade!? They did such an outstanding job with value and shading and composition.

Hope Hunter Knight said...

WOW! These are unbelievable. So simple but so effective. Your kids did an amazing job with their compositions and values. Tell your cover girl I like her style;)

Shannah said...

Thank you for the nice comments:)

They ALL turned out amazing. Clearly I had trouble narrowing down what to show in this post:) I wish I could share them all. I'm very proud of their hard work and creativity.

We spent all year on photography and composition so these are the culminating results. Drawing time took 3 to 4 art classes.

SCutshall said...

Amazing and very inspiring! I have been planning on having my students use their own photographs for their art. Your lesson has definitely motivated me to get on
it.

Chesterbrook Academy Elementary said...

Beautiful observational drawings by your students.

The shading and composition is amazing.

This drawing exercise was a success.

Joelle said...

Your students did a great job! You can really see all the details and nuances!

Chesterbrook Academy Elementary said...

Shannah,

Visit my blog to receive your Original Blog award.

Congratulations.

dmasse said...

wow! those drawings just blow me a way. kudos to you and your students!