"Snowmen at Night" Chalk Art! {Art Lesson Tutorial}

 A few weeks ago Jen over at Runde’s Room posted about a super cute art project called 'Catching Snowflake's that she had done with her 5th/6th graders, via an idea posted at Artisen de Arts.  I had never been to this art blog and now I am hooked!  She has so many awesome ideas that are perfect for 5^th graders to take art a little further than just cutting and pasting.

One idea that I loved was working on blending, highlights and shadows by creating snowmen out of chalk.  And perfect for this time of year because we haven’t been without snow on the ground in over a month now. We also read the fun picture book “Snowmen at Night” which has beautiful pictures that were inspiration for our art!  I truly believe that even at the ripe old age of 10, 5^th graders can still truly enjoy a picture book- mine did!

They turned out SO cute! Here is what the final products looked like:

 {Scroll down for Tutorial}

Tutorial for Chalk “Snowmen at Night”

1.   Gather your materials. You’ll need dark blue construction paper, and a chalk set for each student- the essential colors are white, dark blue, and purple.  The other colors come in handy when students are decorating their snowmen with hats and buttons towards the end of the project

2.   Use a pencil to sketch three circles for the snowman and a line for the horizon.

3.   Use the white chalk to fill in the snowman and the ground.  Don’t worry if it looks kind of ‘scribbly’- once you blend, it will all smooth out and look like freshly fallen snow!

4.   Use one finger to blend! Move finger in a circular motion over chalk.

5.   Use the blue and/or purple and/or black chalk to create a shadow.  A little goes a long way!  I instructed students to put the darkest color on the edge of the snowman’s body and then use less as they move towards the center in a C-Shape.

6.   Use a different finger to blend the shadow with the white.  At this point some students thought they had too much shadow or too much white- Luckily the chalk is pretty forgiving so I just told the students to add more white, or add more blue, and blend, blend, blend!

7.   We added the snowman’s shadow next.  Draw three much smaller circles at a diagonal under the snowman’s body.  For the shadow, completely color it in with shadow colors and then blend.  It looks best if colors are darkest closest to the bottom of the snowman’s body.

8.   When all of that is done, it’s time to ‘freestyle’!  Let the students use the other colors to decorate and dress their snowman however they wish!

{I couldn’t find my pictures for these steps, but if I find them I’ll add them later, sorry!}