Beautiful BIRDS!

Birds! GIANT birds! It's hard to tell the scale with these little photos on a screen but this is our fave mega-sized project for teeny artists. It's a satisfying accomplishment to cover all of that blank white space on the paper, plus everyone's bird turns out a little different. 

 We give our students photo printouts of different types of birds, and lead them through a simple method of pencil drawing on a large (18” x 24”) paper using circles, ovals, triangles, and lines. We encourage them to reference the printouts, but also to create their own interpretation of a bird.

They then paint their background before moving on to the bird. We instruct them to fill in all the blank white space around their drawing. This can seem like a difficult project for small humans, but it’s great for building their confidence in creating large-scale art pieces. We usually assist them in turning their paper upside down so they can reach the furthest corners of their paper.

Insider tip - we save the black paint for the very end, and distribute it with small detail brushes for outlining the birds. We find that this helps prevent students from being overzealous with black paint which can easily get out of control.

The end results are a joy to behold- they definitely have unique personalities.