Art 1 Still Life Painting Projects

Art 1 students have been drawing and painting a still life for what seems like weeks! The process has been rather involved, but well worth the efforts. 

Here are a couple of pictures of the still life set ups. I placed 9 arrangements of different objects around the classroom. Thankfully I have a large room!

 

Students were required to draw each of the 9 arrangements 3 times on a quarter size piece of paper. Yes, that was 27 drawings!!! As you can imagine, they appreciated this assignment.

Once the 27 were done, the students then chose one they enjoyed drawing the most and drew it on a larger paper. This was a separate grade.

Then I gave out 12x12 chipboard and the students had to draw their still life on the board, completely filling the board.

Here is my sample that I drew.

 Then, because we were using chipboard and it would warp, I had the students paint the backside a solid color.

And finally the fun part! Students had to paint their "canvas" in grey scale. This base makes students focus on composition errors and highlights and shadows. 

 

When the "dead" painting was the complete, the students was ready to add color. Students were given red, yellow, blue, black and white and were required to mix their own colors. The dark greys from the dead painting gave a great depth to the mixed colors.

This project has taken a lot longer than I originally planned, but was worth it. I can't wait to show off the finished artwork!