Art Room Britt: Christmas Cars

Kids 8-14

Kids 8-11

For our final project of the fall semester I wanted a project that incorporates some of the techniques and skills that we practiced over the last weeks. I wanted it to be somewhat holiday or seasonally inspired, and should span over two class periods so that we have plenty of time to develop our piece and take care to create something detailed and unique.

Kids 7-8

The 'Christmas car' thing is all over Pinterest in various renditions. Whimsy watercolor illustrations, bold acrylic paintings, children's art projects, and more. I concluded that, properly conceived, this project would rehash many of the skills we learned over the last semester. So I decided to tackle this idea with my kids using watercolor, colored pencil and pen. We would address value and shadowing with our media, and we would be mindful to draw with care, and with attention to detail and function. Additionally, students would learn a new skill: how to draw presents using 1 point perspective, creating a 3-D stack of boxes. Lastly, students would have to think like designers and figure out how and where to incorporate a Christmas tree into their car: where looks good, what makes sense, where does it fit, etc.

To begin, students looked at illustrations of Christmas cars, complete with presents and a tree, just to get a sense of what their possibilities are. We then looked at drawings and photos of different cars from various angles. Students sketch out a few drawings of cars exploring different styles and angles. While I was prepared to teach kids how to draw a car from a 3/4 angle, using two point perspective, students did not choose this more difficult option, which I was kind of relieved about, since it's quite complicated. I'll save this lesson for another time!
We practiced drawing boxes with 1-point perspective, and overlapping these.
When we were confident with this, we got to work.

Objectives:

Draw a car (style and angle of your choice)
-Include details.
-Think carefully about symmetry!

Draw 5-7 presents on top of the car.
-Overlap presents.
-Draw them for a 3-D effect (1 point perspective)
-Think about variety (vary size, shape and angle)

Include a Christmas tree somewhere.
-Think about composition: Where does it look good? Where can you fit it in? What would make sense?

Mapping out our main features:
The car should consume the bottom half of the paper, and the presents and tree on top should fill the top half of the paper. Breaking this down for kids helps them get the sizing and scale of their main features right. Otherwise cars will be drawn too small. We still had some issues with presents being drawn too small, and these students were encouraged to draw bigger... we don't want teeny presents on big cars, or tons of empty space at the top of the paper.

Drawing:
Cars were drawn in pencil with attention to detail, form and function. Presents were then stacked on top of the car, with some presents showing their side angle as well as their front angle.
I reminded kids that generally, presents should be stacked from big up to small. For good and interesting composition, presents should come in a variety of sizes and shapes. I also encourage kids not to put a bow or ribbon on every-single-present (they will try), as this quickly overwhelms the eye. The kids totally got this point and generally balanced out their used of ribbons.
Once the car had a good stack of presents on it, students had to think about where, and how, to fit in their Christmas tree. This required them to think about composition and scale: where do I have space, where makes sense, what would look good.... thinking like designers!

Students had the option to trace their pencil lines in black fine liner permanent marker, or to leave the tracing for later, after painting, using colored pencil.

Painting:
Students used watercolor in sheer colors to paint their cars and presents. A slightly darker value was then added wherever there might be a shadow. Going from light washes of transparent color to increasingly more intense color is the ticket with watercolor! For the presents, to get that 3D effect on their presents, a tiny bit of brown was mixed in with their main color. For example, if the front of their present is blue, then the side of their present will be blue plus brown. This darkens the value and instantly gives the box dimension.

Students had the choice to either paint their ribbons and bows with a fine detail brush and a more intense application of watercolor, or in colored pencil.

Trees were painted similarly: from a light value of transparent green to a darker value, slowly building on shadows. We mixed blue with our greens for a deeper, cooler evergreen color. We used our brush to flick lines outward for that tree texture. Colored pencil was also used over top, once dry, for added tree texture.

*Tip: for painting the windows, simply paint a dash or two of really light transparent gray across the window. Less is more, and it does the job beautifully.

Outlining/Defining:
Once all elements were dry, students outlined their car and presents in colored pencil, if they hadn't already outlined with fine line marker. The key is to use a similar but darker color to outline each element, so if the car is red, we outline it in dark red. If the present is purple, we outline it in dark purple (or dark blue - whatever is close but darker to the original color). This gives instant emphasis and definition without creating too much contrast - a nice touch.

Backgrounds were painted in wet-on-wet in a light wash of a color that 'looked good' with our composition.

All my kids classes did this project with success and they all enjoyed it. There was plenty of opportunity for individual choice and expression.

*My little class (ages 7-8) used larger format paper (roughly 12x18 inches, or A3) and they did not use fine-liner pens to outline, but only colored pencil. Otherwise, the approach was the same for both my age groups.