James Rizzi Birds

This beautiful lesson comes from Patty at Deep Space Sparkle. Before stumbling upon it via Pinterest, I'd never heard of James Rizzi, but having taught this lesson, I'm eager to learn more about his bright, bold work. The kids loved looking at it, too!

I've never been one for much directed drawing. But as I learned in one of the AOE classes I took over the summer, DDs can be a great way to boost kids' confidence in their abilities. And who doesn't want that?

After drawing with a pencil, kiddos outlined their birds--or as we called them, pudgy budgies!--with black oil pastel, then painted with liquid watercolor. To prep the kids, we discussed the warm and cool color families; I made a simple worksheet to enforce the content, as well as have kids pre-select their color scheme. Warm colored birds got cool colored backgrounds and vice versa.

 

The kids ate this up! And since we did our initial DD, older students have reported that their second grade siblings cannot stop drawing birds on their own!

Thank you, Patty! This one's a keeper!