Close-up Giraffe Paintings for Sixth Grade

Art Shows are fast approaching! It's a pleasure to see the proud faces of all my artist when they see their beautiful art on the walls of the multi-purpose room. But, of course, art shows means lots of organizing. (I'm planning a post soon detailing the stages of art show planning at my schools. Check back soon!) One of the first steps for me is sorting the hundreds of student projects into personal folders/portfolio. I found this stack of giraffes and just had to snap a few pictures before I tucked them inside the folders.
These were created by my sixth grade class at Brandon school. I featured this project in my "Drawing Animals" PDF lesson plan. The down-loadable booklet features handouts and a tutorial.

Giraffes Can't Dance Drawing and Painting Lesson

Who says giraffe's can't dance? According to my first grade students, they not only dance, but sway, gyrate and hip hop! Based on the book of the same name, the lesson was done in two 40 minute sessions.

Supplies

Step One:
White 12" x 18" paper
Pencil/eraser
Brown, orange, yellow and black broad tip markers

Step Two:
Plastic cup and pencil
Palette of green, yellow,white, purple and blue tempera paint
12" x 18" white paper

Step One: Drawing the Giraffe
On the first day, the kids drew the giraffe. I used directed instruction and gave the children options for creating their own unique movements. Use pencils. It's a hard drawing and the kids will get frustrated if they can't erase. Keep the lesson simple. Concentrate on the big shapes, i.e. a big circle for the belly. Color the giraffes using yellow or orange then add spots and marks using a brown or black marker. Finally, cut it out.
Tip: Make sure to put the student's name on the back of teh cut-out giraffe!

Step Two: Painting the Background
For the second class, we created the background. Using a plastic cup, the kids traced a big circle for the moon. Mixing blue and purple paint (double-loading technique), the kids used big sweeping brush strokes to paint the sky. Start from the bottom (about a third of the way up) and paint towards the moon, being careful not to paint inside the circle shape. Next, the kids painted the moon using white paint. They painted in a circular motion, starting in the center and moving outwards until they touched the blue paint. I encouraged the kids to paint over the blue, so the white and blue sky would mix. Finally, the kids painted the grass yellow, waited 30 seconds, then painted over the yellow with green paint. Using the ends of their brushes, the kids etched grass into the paint.
Paste the giraffes onto background.





(Mrs. Macaluso's first graders from Mountain View School and Mrs. Calene's First graders from Brandon)

Whimsicle Giraffes and Zebras Painting Lesson

I usually do a lesson with upper grade kids on drawing African Animals. For this lesson, we focused on creating whimsical Zebras and Giraffes.
Materials: white chalk pastel, black 12 x 18 paper, tempera paints (reds, blues and greens as well as browns, yellows and greys) and white, pictures of zebras and giraffes.

1. The kids sketched large images of their chosen animals. They could focus on the heads, whole body, etc. At first the kids were stressed that they couldn't erase, but after showing them that chalk could easily be wiped away, they became less concerned with their lines. They soon figured out that most chalk lines would be completely covered with paint anyway.


2. Next, the kids were instructed to double-dip their paint brush first in a bright color, then in white. The white adds a creaminess to the color allowing the color to "pop" from the page.
3. We talked about creating backgrounds that weren't realistic and making leaves, flowers, vines, etc. These items filled in the black space around the animal drawing.

1. Lastly, gold and silver metallic oil pastel was used to outline the background images creating a whimsical garden!