Me and My Shadow-- Part One

I was very much inspired by a post I saw a long time ago from An Art Room Filled with Fauves for this project.  I loved how simple and how many times students got to practice their figure drawing.  Here is how I approached the lesson.

We started by studying our mini figure models and moving our body.  I'm always inspired by Rina from K-6 Art for activities like this.  She get's her kids moving all the time. This group loved trying to challenge their pose.

There were several parts that the students had to make to complete this project.  First the tracer.  We used a heavier tagboard to draw a figure using shapes.  We had already practiced a lot so the kids had it down.  The tough part of this project was the cutting of this tracer.  I would say that 90% of the students were very successful.  There were some tape repairs and I did a 'teacher check' (and in some cases teacher help) on some of them because this was the base of the rest of this project.

The second part of this project I had them draw a horizon line and place their figure on it.  They had to color this figure in using black crayon.  I would have also had them darken in the horizon line if I was to do this one again.

Then, they drew the outline on a white sheet of paper and filled int he details.  They outlined and colored with crayon again.

This was something to remind the students when they were doing the two final steps.  Be sure to have the figure and shadow facing the same way.

As the students cut and glued the projects on, we talked about placement of the figure to the shadow. You want to make sure that the figure is close and overlapping the shadow a bit.  You also want to make sure that your figure is on or below the horizon line.  And again, make sure that your figure and your shadow are going the same direction.

I love the simplicity of these cute projects.  There were small ways that students were able to show their creativity such as the image below.  I have a second post to come on an experiment with this project that allowed for more creativity.  Below is about as 'out of the box' students were able to go with this project.