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Hand Drawing
Explore contour and shape with your class as they complete a hand drawing. This resource outlines important points to focus on as you teach learners of any age how to successfully draw a human hand using a contour or single-line...
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Life size figures - Moveable Murals
Students create life-size human figures and decorate them in a collage style with torn colored pieces of pictures from magazines. They display them around the school, creating life-size murals.
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Miriam Schapiro Action Figures Collage
Students create a background with a marbling technique. They plan and create a figure from assorted papers, mixing solids and patterns. Students glue the figure to the background, and embellish negative space with glitter.
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Using Light and Shadow to Create a Sense of Character
Pupils heighten awareness and mastery of the subtle factors of drawing technique. Activities focus solely on the human figure, particularly the face. students list 5 of elements of light and shadow which affect portrayal of character and...
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Ellis Wilson: An Elementary School Art Lesson
Students study the life of Ellis Wilson. They examine the use of simple shapes when drawing human figures. They examine how to incorporate pattern into a background setting.
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Draw Like an Egyptian
Learners discover the cultural history of Egypt by illustrating Egyptian figures. In this art history lesson, students analyze the Egyptian styles of figure drawings and emulate that by creating their own illustrations using an Egyptian...
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Personification Lesson Plans and Resources
This resource on personification provides three different approaches aimed at different levels. The first, appropriate for upper elementary, provides examples of personification, followed by an exercise that requires replacing a word in...
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Drawing a section of the figure, rotated into a different point of view
Learners scan a drawing and practice a blow-up procedure. They create a third generation from a second. Students are given a new point of view in handling a human figure in the drawing.
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Human Abstraction
Students explore and compare abstraction of human forms in various ancient cultures and by creating self-portraits using geometric shapes. They identify which geometric shapes form the following features: face, nose, arms, torso, legs,...
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Horse Character: Ceramics Lesson
Animals oftentimes elicit various characteristics which make them symbolic or representative of human feeling, action, or emotion. The class creates horse characters out of clay to show character action and symbolism. This is a great...
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Creating Mood and Space in a Drawing
Learners take photos of spaces that imply the figure. (Students could also pull images from magazines from the web if they do not have access to a camera.) Using the photograph as a source, make a drawing as you usually would with black...
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The Body of Human Rights
Students, in groups, draw a life-size outline of a person on paper. They then place each article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on a part of the body, writing the number of the article in the appropriate place (e.g.,...
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Three Dimensional Art of Vertebrates and Invertebrates
Young scholars, during this twelve week series of lessons, learn basic anatomy through life sketches of human skeletons and shells. They learn fundamentals of line and convey life through sketches learning science through art.
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Foil Action Figures
Learners create a foil sculpture representative of a human figure and a landscape drawing as a backdrop for their figure.
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Protecting the Past: Give a Hoot, Don't Loot!
Students, in small groups, simulate an ancient civilization and the art they created, another group represents vandals, and the final group represents archaeologists who try to figure out what life was like for the "ancient peoples". ...
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"ART ZOO 'Blacks in the Westward Movement', 'What Can You Do with a Portrait', and 'Of Beetles, Worms, and Leaves of Grass'"
Students study black history, examine portraits and portrait making and create their own portraits, and investigate their natural environment. This humanities lesson provides a text that can be used to teach lessons in black history,...
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The Body Talks
Young historians examine the gestures of human subjects represented in Mannerist, Baroque and Renaissance paintings. After they play charades and attempt to match dialogue with body language, learners create a drawing that includes...
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Skeleton
Students study the skeleton. In this human body lesson plan, students draw and label bones in the body by tracing each other and creating a skeleton out of body parts and brass fastners.
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Digestive System
Students analyze how the digestive system works by taking the food we eat and breaking it down for our bodies to use for various reasons. They list the major components of the digestive system and draw a diagram. They explain how...
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Classical Art
Students study the evolution of Greek and Roman art in pottery and human form. They examine how the artistic evolution is related to discoveries in science and travel through the lessons in this unit.
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Bodies In Motion: Shapes and Gestures
Students use geometric shapes to describe body parts. In this geometry lesson plan, students use geometry vocabulary as they discuss body parts. They practice drawing bodies using shapes based on a wooden model that is poised to show...
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Funny Face Self Portraits
Learners gain appreciation for the drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. They show human emotion by drawing facial features in correct proportion - studying ratio of eye width to the rest of the facial features. They create values by varying...
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Desert Views - First Impressions: Travelers on the Gila Trail
Students draw animals and plants that are described to them as they read passages of people who traveled across the Gila Trail in the Southwest. In this Gila Trail lesson plan, students also write a letter describing a plant or animal in...