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:

  1. Wow. Those drawings are spectacular!

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

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  3. 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;)

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  4. 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.

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  5. 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.

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  6. Beautiful observational drawings by your students.

    The shading and composition is amazing.

    This drawing exercise was a success.

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

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  8. Shannah,

    Visit my blog to receive your Original Blog award.

    Congratulations.

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

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