Drawing from observation is an awesome skill that every artist should work on.  I don’t mean with the pressure to make the artwork look super realistic, but with the goal of observation at the forefront.  Giving students the experience of an artwork that requires them to SLOW down, not rely on assumptions and check back with their eyes frequently throughout the drawing, is so valuable.

This school is new to me this year and my fourth graders are (obviously) new to me too. It was a bit of an assessment for me as well.  I decided to use art supplies as our still life subject, because I felt they were pretty easy to draw, colorful and well...abundant.

My tip is to make the set up as easy as you can. I chose to cut cardboard rectangles and hot glue my items down to the cardboard so I could store the trays and not worry about the objects moving. A circle was drawn to mark the spot of the paint pint as I chose not to glue this.

We began by talking about still life and the reason artists might create a still life. I tried to point out simple objects they might have at home that they could set up to draw on their own.  We also covered the many media that still life can be created in and viewed some examples in these various media.

Because of behavior factors in the classes, we used simple tools to add color.  It wasn’t my original plan, but it worked out just fine and it goes to show that we have many other factors to consider in planning our lessons than just aesthetics.  Students had access to colored and black sharpie markers and twistable crayons. The bright, bold colors really dressed up even the simplest drawing.

The final touch (and a bit of a risk on my part) was allowing students to splatter paint on top of their still life if they wanted to.  I had two boxes in the back of the room and allowed two students at a time to use liquid watercolors to splatter over their art.