Oil pastels are one of my favorite art media to work with. The color is bright and pure, they are soft and easy-to-blend, and the color goes on smoothly. It’s all great until you put an oil pastel into a kid’s hand. Instantly, you’ve got a mess. Hands and faces and shirts and floors covered in color, artworks smudged and almost ruined, and the bright, pure oil sticks dulled and mixed with all of the other colors.
When a kid starts on a white piece of paper, the final product often looked hopelessly smudged and outright dirty. I know it’s about the process, and not about the product, but still. Dirty, smudged artworks are sad. But, we can prevent this.
I don’t know where I learned about this project when I was teaching. I was all over the web looking for inspiration, so this was not my idea (if it is yours, let me know. This was around 2009). But, it worked wonders in my art class.
Step One: Draw the picture.
In my lesson, I did animals. I had the students draw them BIG on the paper. I showed them a bunch of line drawings of animals I printed from http://www.drawingnow.com/ for inspiration.
The key really is to draw something with not too much detail. A big, simple line drawing is perfect. Try to have them avoid adding suns and trees and flowers as they are prone to do. It’s close to impossible to tell a first grader not to include flowers and suns and trees, but do your best. 🙂 You’ll see below a lot of that stuff slipped through.
I also threw in a small lesson about a horizon line and where to draw it on the paper. At the end of this step, you need a big drawing with a horizon line. [Read more…] about Making Art with Kids: Oil Pastels that POP!