8th Grade Space- a Choice Based Art Lesson

 I have struggled this year with not being able to find a way to give my middle school class as much choice as I usually do. The class is big for my classroom so social distancing is tricky plus supplies I wanted for their personal art supply kits were back ordered so they’ve mostly used drawing media. I wanted to cover a topic while at least allowing them to choose their direction so after observing the need in their independenent drawings, I picked the concept of space! 

We did some warm up activities and skill builders like practicing one and two point linear perspective, a simple landscape with atmospheric perspective, and a design using negative space. When it was time to plan their project, students could choose from suggestions or come up with their own idea as long as they used space!

I needed to modify a lesson for a student so she directed what shapes she wanted and where she wanted them. I printed out the design on card stock so she could connect the edges to the vanishing point. 

1 Point Perspective

Back in December I did a mini lesson on 1 point perspective for my 3rd-6th grade students. I showed 4th-6th examples of drawing a simple house or drawing initials. The initials were the biggest hit but a few students tried out drawing something in a realistic space. Before my demo, however, I showed a "Tip in a Minute" video to give a real-world example of perspective.

I need to remember to photograph something they will recognize using 1, 2 and 3 point perspective.

Perspective can turn a square into a cube!

3rd grade drawing