Charley Harper Winter Cardinals

I posted about this project back in 2013 here.  This years projects are turning out so sweet, I just need to post a few new ones.  I made a small change in the lesson this year as well.  Students drew the vegetation and bird during day one prior to applying the watercolor background with the kosher salt.  That was allowed to dry and week two they returned to the project using watercolor pencils to add color to the bird.  I think this gave them better control over the coloring of the bird and it gave me the opportunity to introduce them to an additional medium, which they loved.  This is alway a WOW lesson that I make certain to post on the bulletin boards and share with everyone in the school.  This is done with 2nd grade students.

Charley Harper Cardinals in the Evergreens

This year second grades placed their cardinals in evergreens.  Connections were made to science as the discussion was opened up about what an evergreen was and where we might see them.  The birds were drawn with black crayon and the evergreens were made with shades of green.  If you haven't purchased liquid watercolors for your classroom, they are wonderful.  Younger students can use them much more easily that the semi-wet watercolors in a tray.   I can better focus the lesson on technique and brush use rather than concentrating on the water/paint ratio.

American Artist Charley Harper Bluebirds

Last year I introduced my students to the work of American Artist Charley Harper.  They created some wonderful cardinal paintings.  This year I decided to try his bluebird with second grade students.  First off I need to share, this bluebird was pretty hard.  I only did this lesson with one class and returned to the cardinal for the others.  This was our first day back after Thanksgiving break.  We had a huge snow storm that took down a lot of trees and one of my favorite trees outside of the Art room suffered a huge loss.  I stepped outside the room during my prep and picked up one of the fallen branches and brought it inside of the room.  It is still hanging on my whiteboard.  I decided to have the second graders observe the branch and attept to see it like a scientist.  They started the lesson by first practicing on a small sheet of paper and then they drew a larger second drawing.  To this one they added the Charley Harper bluebird.   All the drawing was done with black crayon and they painted with watercolors.  Students chose to make the night sky a dark purple or to make an orange early morning sky.

Charley Harper Cardinals

Second graders took a look at some of the work by Charley Harper today.  He is described as a modernist artist and is best known for his simple geometric shapes drawings.  Most of his work depicts wildlife.  The focus today was on several of his prints with a cardinal theme.

Students followed along as they drew their cardinals using the instructions below.

The next step involved taking a look at the vegetation outside the windows of the classroom in order to really see what  a heavy frost made nature look like.   Students then drew various winter dead looking plants around their birds.  Black crayons were used for the drawings and also to color in the black area of the bird's face.  Students using liquid watercolors to complete the composition.  Kosher salt was added to the painting of the sky to make it appear as if it might be snowing.   Here are a few of the wonderful completed projects.