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| Teacher Sample |
In the cold dark days of winter, I was longing to do something with my students that was both wintery and warming. I also wanted my students to experience a more lengthy project, one which required developing a piece with multiple elements and layers. This project did it all!
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| Coloring the fox |
We drew our foxes on brown drawing paper (or butcher paper) by direct observation from photographs. I drew one myself on the white board to help them along. Tails were swung around forward, in front of paws.
We colored our foxes with colored pencils using cross-hatching and hatching line techniques. We used as many warm colors as we could, keeping our foxes lively, warm and textured. Limited cool colors were used for accents, where there were deep shadows. We learned that blue is used for shadows on white, so used it appropriately in the chest, ears and tail ends of our foxes. Eyes were emphasized with dark pencils, markers and gel pen.
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| Before the quilt background |
Once foxes were complete, we added woodland botanicals. We referenced visuals and drew by observation, ensuring that our botanicals enter the scene from at least three edges of our paper. This makes it look like our fox is truly in the forest.
We colored with colored pencil, adding shadowing. For boldness, we outlined out botanicals in marker (either contrasting or similar colors).
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| Painting the quilt frame in gouache |
Now onto the snowy background. We used a flat brush and painted white gesso all around our fox and botanicals in short dabs for a snowy, textured effect. We used the edge or corner of our brush when painting around our fox to carefully maintain the furry texture.
The next step of our project was to paint the quilted background. We used sturdy cardstock, and painted only the edges in a geometric pattern reminiscent of 18th Century New England quilts. We could choose from two colors, either blue or red. To achieve that subdued, earthy tone seen in these vintage quilts, we mixed our blue or red with brown and white. Once complete, we pasted our fox drawing on our quilt background. Those who did not have time to create a quilt background pasted on patterned deco paper instead.
Voila, a highly developed and detailed project, both wintery and lively, with countless learning opportunities.
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| 8-11 year olds |
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| 7-13 year olds |
