1st – 2nd Grade Art Lessons

Painting Portraits

This is a project for 1st or 2nd Grade (6-8 years olds). However, you can simplify it for 5 year olds if you use a template of the head.

The project was inspired by DeepSpaceSparkle tempera portraits.

Materials: large paper, oil pastel (or crayons), thick brushes, acrylic, tempera 0r gouache paints (make sure you have skin tone color)

Project takes about 60 minutes (I advice to make two 30-minutes sessions)

First, explain kids that a portrait is a picture of a person. Let kids look at each other. Ask kids what shape is our head? Is the left side of the face same as right side? Explain what is symmetry. Point that our eyes are same size and are located symmetrically with an imaginary middle line. Eyebrows are same symmetrical about the middle. The same applies to ears. Nose and lips are on an imaginary middle line.

Let kids decide whom they are going to draw (themselves, mom, dad, best friend). Tell them that they will draw a shoulder-length portrait so there is no need to draw hands, body and legs.

place the paper vertically
begin with a head shape. Draw a big egg-like oval. Younger kids (5 year olds) can trace a template.
make a neck and shoulders

draw guiding lines. Separate the face into two equal parts with a vertical line. Then draw a horizontal line right in the middle of the head. Tell kids to press on a pencil very lightly because thick lines will be hard to erase. Explain that the horizontal line will help to position eyes. The vertical line will help to position nose and mouth. Help younger kids to draw guiding lines (older can do it by themselves)

name the parts of an eye. Tell kids that an eye has a shape of a fish or a leaf. The top part of an eye is like a wide rainbow and the bottom part is like a smile.

draw the first eye in the middle of the left half of the horizontal guiding line. Don’t draw eyelashes, it will be done in oil pastels at the very end.

draw the second eye on the right side positioning it in the middle of the right part of the horizontal guiding line.

draw a mouth and a nose (like a hook or a letter “J”) positioning it along the vertical guiding line.
add eyebrows

draw hair. If a person has bangs – draw it right over the eyebrows. Otherwise, just draw a rainbow-like line for the line where hair start to grow.
add ears (if they are seen). Ears should be placed along the horizontal guiding line.

erase the guiding lines
begin painting with skin color. Tell kids to paint all of the face, the neck and ears covering lips, eyebrows and the nose BUT leave white paper for eyes

paint hair and a shirt

This is where you can finish the first session.

Second session includes facial parts in oil pastel and painting background:

color the eyes’ irises and lips
outline everything with an oil pastel (or a crayon) using the color closest to the hair. Draw eyelashes and pupils.
add cheeks: paint the cheeks with pink oil pastel and smudge it with a finger.
add patterns to the shirt. You can make buttons, necklaces, earrings or hair pieces.
paint the background. We used solid color, but it might look very nice with multicolored background as well.

Here are my students working hard:

And here are the beautiful portraits:

Spring Project

Painting tulips

This project is good for kids age 5-8. Younger kids can do only 0ne tulip.

Materials: paper, thick and thin brushes, acrylic paints, watercolor paints (green and blue)

Project takes about 45-60 minutes

give kids a choice of a still-life composition (vertical) or a landscape composition (horizontal)
draw outlines:

paint tulips with acrylic paints starting with the lightest colors (yellow and pink) and then painting with darker colors (orange, red and purple)
paint stems and leaves
using a large brush paint the sky with blue watercolor and the grass with light green watercolor (or use brown for the table)
add some shadows:
- add some brushstrokes with a thin brush using darker color (for example, use orange for a yellow tulip or red for a pink tulip)
- add green brushstrokes for stems and leaves

Here how it turned:

Learning about Landscape Genre

Beach and Palms Landscape

Materials: paper (preferable large format), pencil, brushes, watercolor or acrylic paints

Project takes about 60-75 minutes (can be split into two 30-35 min lessons)

The purpose of this lesson is to learn about a Landscape Genre.

This project was inspired by the artworks of American artist Frederic Kohli:

Introduction:

There are 5 main Genres in Painting: Landscape, Portrait, Still-life, History Painting and Genre Painting.

The word “Landscape” is derived from the Dutch word “landschap”, what means a patch of ground. Landscape is any picture presenting a scenic view of nature or city. For example, images of meadows, hills, mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, forests, coastal views, seascapes, city streets and skylines are all landscapes. Landscape can depict a real, imaginary or idealized scene.

Show kids several images of landscapes. You can play a game with guessing what is a landscape and what is not. Show kids images of landscapes, portraits, still-lives and ask to name landscapes only. If the kids are older (7-8) you can show tricky images like portraits with a landscape on a background.

Project

place the paper horizontally and draw a horizon line from one edge to another at the middle of the paper (or a little higher)

draw a beach line as a wide smile (curved, but not too much)

draw the trunks of the palms on one side of the beach or both. The number of palms can be 1 to 3 (if more, there will be not enough empty space for the sea)

add coconuts and leaves on the tops of the palms. Tell kids skip detailing the leaves and draw them simple (like a comb) because they will be painted over.

add details: a hut or a cabin, sun, clouds, yachts, rocks, shells or even an alligator

begin painting with the lightest colors (yellow sand and sun), then do the light-blue sky (if you use watercolor paint – add water, if you use acrylic – add white paint). Use wide brushes for large areas of sand, sky and sea. Paint the sea with different shades of blue, purple and aquamarine. Use small (thin) brushes for painting palms and details. When finishing, add some accents: waves on the sea, small rocks or grass.