'Tis the Week Before Christmas

As our Winter Holiday approaches, 3rd graders finish up these Tumbling People:

Here is how we started -- contemplating playing cards strewn about:

 Students used one card and drew their composition with pencil. Then they outlined the rectangles with black crayon to keep the watercolor from "traveling" between them. ( I demonstrated how to do this -- overlapping, not crossing over previous pencil lines, starting from the bottom and moving towards the top, etc.)

 Next came the watercolor: plain water first, then drop in two or 3 colors and watch the color run and mix together -- just like magic!!

 While the paint dried, students made gesture drawings the same size as their cards using white crayon.

Then it was time to place their figures and glue them on using dots of white glue.

This took one class period -- 50 minutes. Some kids had time to make a figure for each of their rectangles, others had one or two, but all the compositions were delightful!!

We ran out of time but in a second period we could have cut out the tumbling people and mounted them on a variety of different backgrounds. Here is what that might have looked like:

I think it is interesting to see how the same figures take on different moods with the varying backgrounds. This would provide a good opportunity to discuss positive and negative space. It's fun to experiment!!