Contour Lines in Complementary Colors!

How can we use planning or drafts in art to influence our final work?

Second grade artists are building on their contour line skills to create bicycle drawings from observations.  

In the process, they discovered it all starts with a plan! 

Their challenge was to zoom in on a section of the bicycle and draw that using contour lines.  View finders were a huge help for this task.  

These budding artists honed in on their observation skills - it was so fun to watch!

Students also learned to use planning sheets as a tool to brainstorm their ideas and practice sketching first.  

These thumbnail sketches then were developed into their final drawings.  

Its visual brainstorming at its best! 

Finally, these 2nd graders had a lesson in complementary colors as they had to choose 1 pair to use for their final artwork.  It was tricky creating different values of their two colors to make sure their paintings had interest. I think they did great!

What do you think of their final work?

2nd Grade Contour Line Drawings

How can we use line to capture the basic details of an object?

Mrs. LaVangie's second grade class is exploring contour lines, or the outline of an object. They watched a fun video from art teacher Tricia Fugelstad to truly discover what a contour line is.

2nd grade artists then learned that practice makes perfect. They experimented with drawing many different objects in the art room; scissors, glue bottles, ink brayers, paint brushes, and more. I was so impressed with how they were able to capture the objects with simple lines. Take a look!