Lesson At A Glance

Here’s a brief overview of the complete lesson. It’s also on your prep page in the Ready, Set, Go! section (below the lesson).

Colored buttons jump to each section in the full lesson plan below.

15 min – Create still life & take photo

10 min – Draw vegetables in 4 frames

5 min – Complete drawings

5 Min – Get ready to paint

 5 min – Find an emphasis

35 min – Watercolor vegetable drawings

2 Min – Everyone helps

SCROLL & TEACH

LESSONPLAN

Each section is a different color. Read over once and then you can SCROLL & TEACH using any device you like. It’s designed to work well with your phone.

Students learn about contemporary artists.

Andy Warhol was a pop artist in New York during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. One of the most controversial works he did was a “portrait” of Mickey Mouse for a series of famous personalities of the 1950s, which he produced in 1981. Disney eventually decided against suing Warhol for infringing on their property rights, and instead made a new calendar titled, “The Art Of Mickey Mouse”. They featured Andy Warhol’s Micky on the cover and commissioned other artists over the years to contribute artwork for every month, paying the artists for their work.

Firstlight Art founder, Dennas Davis, was one of the artists commissioned for the Art Of Mickey Mouse calendar in 1996, and his art was featured in the July page for that year. Disney gave him complete freedom to express himself using Mickey as the subject. They did not ask him to change a thing. Dennas used a combination of brush and ink, with computer to create his portrait art of Mickey.

Gallery – Warhol, Escher, & Kusama

Display the slides below as students draw. Describe briefly each artist’s vision.

Warhol – Made his name by painting the most common object he could think of, a can of soup. He wanted to take the mass produced art of commercial promotions and elevate it to fine art. He succeeded. He made 32 paintings – one for every variety of soup. The gallery owner who displayed them originally, purchased them all for $1000 in 1962, and then sold them for $15 million 34 years later to the Museum Of Modern Art.

M. C. Escher – A draftsman and decorative artist who loved nature and printmaking, Escher was fascinated by the interlocking tiles he saw on a trip to Italy when he was a young man. He loved the challenge of making patterns out of birds, fish, reptiles and other animals easily adapted to flatened and interlocking designs called tessellations. In these, there are no air shapes. All of the spaces become the shape of another animal. They look difficult, but can be made by starting with a simple rectangle or square.

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The class should work together to create a quick still life of 4 veggies. They should be placed apart and evenly spaced so that they make a pattern of sorts. The viewpoint is from directly above. You can use 2 stools and a drawing board to make a low table so it’s easier to take the shot from overhead. Work to make it look evenly spaced and within a rectangle photo frame. The point is to make this NOT have an obvious focal point.

Your setup should look similar to this. 

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While students are watching the video, use an app such as Pic Collage (iPhone), to quickly make a print that has 4 duplicate images of the photo you took. You can also email the photo to yourself and use a desktop computer and a word processor if that’s easier and faster for you. It should look like the picture below.

Don’t want to do all this work? We’ve also provided a PDF print (below the example picture), for you to use if you’re not doing your own photo.

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Have students try a few designs using very small drawings called thumbnails. Each small rectangle should be only 1 and 1/2 inches or so, and represent the entire painting. This allows ideas to flow without actual artwork, which slows the drawing down to much. Slow drawing is expression, while fast drawing is design. Small drawings lead to design and ideas.

Students can decide to make their work have only one of the subjects, or a different arrangement. Anything repetitive is great.

Students draw very light guidelines of the 4 frames with the vegetables in each one. Make a repetitive pattern of the veggies on the paper as shown in the reference print.

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Brushes should be nylon for springiness and durability. Round brushes are the most versatile.

Paint pigment list:

• Napthol or Pyrrol Red
• Hansa or Light Yellow
• Pthalo Green (blue shade)
• Cyan or Cerulean Blue
• Ultramarine Blue
• Dioxazine Purple
• Magenta
• Burnt Umber
• Raw Sienna
• Titanium White (professional grade only)

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• Wash hands
• Super-wash brushes if used
• Put art supplies away
• Wipe tables & toss trash
• Remove any smocks (last)
• Check for items on floors and tables

Print all of your PDFs from the lesson plan and cut any references apart as needed.

STUDENT’S

MATERIALS

• 14″ x 17″ Sketch Paper
• 11″ x 15″ watercolor paper
• 2B Pencil
• 4B pencil
• Ebony pencil
• Black Sharpie
• Markers
• India ink
• Ink dip pen with metal nib (not too sharp a point)
• Soft compressed charcoal sticks (not pencils)
• Canvas pencil (dark gray colored pencil)
• White erasers
• Kneaded erasers
• Acrylic paints
• Oil pastels
• Blender sticks (stumps)
• Sandpaper boards (to clean blenders)
• Paper palette pad, or disposable trays/plates
• 11″ x 14″ Canvas (loose or from real canvas pad)
• Canvas boards (optional)
• Tape – blue painter’s tape
• Brushes – All sizes