Dragon Eyes and Pop Art

We have been doing a pretty good job this year ensuring we make the time to focus on art lessons, and it is quickly becoming something we both look forward to all week.

Here's a look at two of our recent projects.

Dragon Eyes

A has been working on drawing BIG this year, so I thought a close up of just one part of a subject would help her develop this skill. 

We decided on Dragon Eyes, because, well who doesn't like dragons?!

It also gave us a chance to talk about color gradients and how to create depth and dimension using color pencils.

A started our by drawing a large dragon eye and then proceeding to fill the rest of the paper with scales of varying sizes to create interest.

We talked about color gradients and practiced on some scratch paper.

She outlined all her lines in black sharpie, and began to color, focusing on creating depth within each scale and the eye itself with the technique she had learned.

She worked on this off and on for several days whenever she felt the mood strike her and we both love how they turned out.

A said hers was a Water Dragon.

Mine was a Fire Flower Dragon.

Definitely a fun project.

Pop Art Candy

This past week we decided that with Halloween fast approaching, our project should center around candy!

Yum

To begin this project, I had A watch a YouTube video on Pop Art.

We looked up various artists of the movement and talked about how their work was a backlash against the abstract art movement.

The focus on consumerism and mass market products made this style of art perfect for incorporating our subject of candy.

A's candy of choice was Mike and Ike.

She used a box of the candy to create a sketch on computer paper in order to work on sizing and composition.

She chose to have the box open and spilling out candy.

After working through her sketch, she then transferred her drawing onto black paper, tracing over her lines with a white color pencil.

Next it was time to add color to her piece.

I love the way oil pastels pop against the black background.

The finished project is AMAZING. 

We are going to mat it, and it will be one of her entries in the art division of our local homeschool group's Discovery Fair later this year.