Family Dinner - Complete Lesson with slideshow, directions, video, rubric, oh my!

For years I have taught the parts of composition to third grade with a lesson I've called "Me in the Art Room".

I mean come on, for third grade, that is some pretty accurate detail of the things happening above my cabinets.

Admittedly, I've gotten kind of sick of it. My team and I have been working on a lot of curriculum lately and someone brought up family portraits.  I remembered an old coworker making these super cute family dinner pictures 10+ years ago. 

I decided to revisit the idea and go overboard with resources.  I started the lesson with a slideshow.

I took the class through a million and twelve examples of families at dinner and had them examine the size of everyone's head, as well as where things were placed.  All of the pictures were stolen from the internet.  The slideshow took us nearly an entire class to get through.

Next, we started our drawings.  I like to put a direction page on each table.  I tell my students that we follow the directions, but our projects do not all end up looking the same.

Once we got a pretty good start on that, up to about heads and shoulders, I showed the the video of me completing the entire drawing portion.  It's kind of time-lapse so it only takes under 2 minutes.

I like to pause it on the last screen and point out a few things about proportion and scale. Plus, how I drew some of the facials features and arms.  I stress that it isn't really about drawing things realistically.

You may have noticed my use of tracers.  I made these tracers ahead of time to distribute to the students.  They are small, medium and large.  This project would work just fine having the kiddos draw their own table, and drawing their own heads.  Definitely. However, with the tracers it 1) has much higher success rate, and 2) it makes the kids really think "Who's head would be big?  Who is in the foreground?  Which one would be the smallest? etc.."  Just drawing them we might not be able to visualize their thought process.  On that note, I had one student who was brand new the day I taught this and he drew the entire family in one straight line exactly the same size. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Once their family has hair, faces, and clothes, I pass out the "What's for Dinner?" page.  I made this brainstorming page because I realized how little kids could remember about what goes on their dinner table!  Or what they ate for dinner the night before!

The next time I saw the students, I wanted to have a little review and pass out their rubrics.  I made up a review page for them to work at with their table-mates.  I drew four family dinner pictures and they had to discuss and write down what they felt was wrong with the pictures.

So, all the people are too small in this one except for the one person.  Who is an adult?  Who is a kid?  Look at how big the furniture is?






This is a common problem for the kiddos.  They want to make the people going AROUND the table.  It has to be nipped in the bud when they are tracing the heads.  Also, it is not a bird's eye view of the table, even though it seems very round.  Keep the plates ovalish.





What is the center of interest here?  The vacuum?  This was brought up in the slideshow.  What the artist wanted to draw your eye to is in in the middle ground with interesting things around it.  Here, the interesting things are spread out.





 No "horizon line to indicate where the floor starts/ends.  Is that a cabinet floating.  That guy isn't even at the table!  There is no sense of composition here!

Then, as a class we went over their rubric.

I emphasized adding a million details while we were still in our drawing phase.

Finally, kids moved on to drawing their backgrounds, tracing with Sharpies, and coloring everything.
The very last day I asked them how they could "take it a step further, and make it even better?" like it says on our rubric in the EXCEEDS column.  I asked them to think about some of the skills we learned with our last project, which happened to be pumpkins fall still life.  They caught on that I was trying to get them to remember mixing analogous colors and adding shadows.  The finished pieces I think families will truly cherish!

Bas-relief, sculptural Family Portraits - with handouts! Age level: Intermediate

Family Portraits

Principle: Unity

Mixed Media

Elements of Space & Form

Plain and simple, this lesson began as a way for me to meet a state goal.  I had to come up with a way for my students to turn a two-dimensional drawing into a three dimensional work of art.  As the lesson developed, however, greater goals were achieved and a more successful work of art was accomplished.

I am always trying to make a connection with my students.  Like most elementary art teachers, I only get to see my students for one small morsel per week. Unlike a classroom teacher trying to get to know only one class, we are trying to get to know several classes.  When you are new to a district, or a student is new, it may take a few semesters before you can forge a meaningful bond with a student.  You also have so many students that finding something in common, or sharing a funny story with each one is hard to do.  This was something that unexpectedly occurred with this project. 

At the beginning of this lesson, we looked at examples of family portraits that are prevalent throughout art history. We explore bas-relief from ancient Greece, to the moody serene depictions of Rembrant’s own family, and to more current translations by Jacob Lawrence.  As a class we discussed the artist’s relationships in the paintings, as well as how they are similar and different to our own.  This opened up the door to sharing about our own families.  I did want to learn more about my students and their lives and families.  I shared about my life and family as well.  They learned about my husband and daughters and dog, and they learned that when I was their age I lived with my mom, brother, and sister because my parents were divorced.  I remembered thinking when I was in school that I was the only kid who had a family like that, so I knew some of my students must of felt that way too.  I didn’t want to draw attention to that, but instead show that I can relate.  The conversations about our families led to a lot of fun anecdotes and art class bonding.

Next, we discussed the principle of design unity before we began our sketch, and how important it is to keep our family members in proportion to one another.  I would draw examples on the board of a gigantic mom next to a puny four year old, or an eleven year old with a giant head next to a dog bigger then them.  We also discussed the element of space and how important our backgrounds are.  Where should our horizon line be? Are the people inside or outside?  Is this a place the family really goes or is it from your imagination?  We brainstormed out loud and drew different combinations.  No one is allowed to draw a straight horizon line with a corner sun, tree with a squirrel hole, and “m” birds.  My class knows that has been drawn way too many times before!  The compositions of family members the students came up with were fantastic.  I have seen all sorts of pets included too from iguanas to goldfish and families spanning several generations. The sketch was very important and we spent a lot of time on it.

When a final sketch was complete and colored, our next problem was to translate that sketch into a mixed media bas-relief sculpture.  The students make their people out of soft air dry clay. We keep the clay in one sausage like piece, and pull the head, arms and legs out of the clay.  This keeps the clay from breaking so easily once it dries.  They paint the pieces and use fabric and yarn scraps to dress their family.  The backgrounds are sturdy pieces of matte board. The students are given free reign over a variety of supplies to complete an environment for their family.  I demonstrate and give ideas on how they could complete the backgrounds, but it is really up to the students to be as creative as possible in how they complete the task and assemble their sculpture.

Another delightful turn of events with this project was the time and effort it took to assemble the sculptures and the creativity the students put forth in their creations.  It made me realize I had been hung up on “meeting goals,” I had forgotten how important the process was.

Objectives

Students will:

• Demonstrate the same idea in 2D and 3D media.
• Create, color, dress, and assemble their family in an imaginative way.
• Do quality work.

Materials

• 9” x 9” white drawing paper
• pencils and erasers,
• extra fine point permanent markers
• colored pencils, markers
• 9” x 9” matte board
• soft air dry clay
• glue
• tempera paints & brushes
• fabric & yarn scraps
• textured paper scraps
• found objects

National Visual Art Standard

Students use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas experiences, and stories

Family Portrait Worksheet and Sculpture Handout

Family Portrait Worksheet and Sculpture Handout helps introduce students to family portraits as a subject matter.  Page two introduces students to bas relief sculpture and new media and techniques they could use