Friday Fancies III

One day, last week Lincoln caught a cute little lizardy thing.

As soon as he showed me, I knew I would use it for Friday’s art subject — a small start on those nature journals I’ve always wanted to do with the kids!

I enlarge our photo on the screen so the boys could see details.  We discussed a good starting point.  Both boys chose to start with the reptile’s nose . . . . . didn’t you know that lizards have noses?

We also talked about where on the drawing paper to start the nose.  Both boys clearly saw the need to start to the far left to have room for drawing his body and long tail out to the right. 

I briefly mentioned the curves and shapes of little lizard and let boys have at it.  Here is 8-year-old Lincoln’s rendition:

Huge improvement in this kids’ drawing!  I can see where he replicated the shapes of the lizard head, abdomen, thigh and claws.

And 10-year-old Sidney’s lizard:

Huge improvement for Sidney also!  I am amazed at the boys’ improvements after some simple art instruction.

While the boys worked on their lizards, I got the girls going on this little drawing exercise from Drawing with Children by Mona Brooks.

This is Prairie’s work.  In my professional, artistic and perfectly unbiased opinion, I think the 3-year-old has got talent.

After this simple exercise, I decided to move them to drawing a simply-shaped object.  I laid a pink colored pencil on Rachels drawing paper and an orange colored pencil on Prairie’s drawing paper.   We touched the straight lines of the colored pencils with our fingers and talked about the pointed end and the flat, round end.

Like last week, I marked a tiny “starting” point on each girls’ paper and then marked a “go-to” point.  I was curious to see what kind of straight lines the girls would manage.

The girls were thrilled about their pencil drawings.