Category: Cycle 1 Drawing
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Cycle 1 Week 6- Chinese Kites
To complete the first six weeks of Cycle 1 we’ll be drawing Chinese kites. The lesson plan touches on mirror-image drawing, one-point perspective, and abstract design. That’s a lot, but I hope the kids feel confident in their knowledge and enjoy drawing their final piece. Many historians believe that China is the birthplace of the…
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Cycle 1 Week 5- Japanese Pagoda
This week students will practice the concept of one-point perspective drawing. This is hard to fit into our unit on ancient art because early civilizations tended to create flattened images with little to no depth. In fact, the use of perspective in painting wasn’t seen until the 15th century in Italy. But, of course, ideas…
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Cycle 1 Week 4- African Masks
Though the arts and ethnic groups of Africa are vast, one common trait is the making of masks. Even within this commonality, African masks can land on a broad spectrum from representational to completely abstract. In this lesson we will look at abstracted masks from the regions of Ancient Mali and Ghana (week 14 history…
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Cycle 1 Week 3- Mayan Glyphs
Just like the ancient Egyptians, the Maya had a written language that was based on symbols and pictures. The images used in their writing are complex and in fact required artists to accomplish them. In this way, scribes always had to be artists, and their word for “scribe” reflected this: t’zib means both artist and…
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Cycle 1 Week 2- Greek Vases
The Foundations Guide suggests using Greek vases to practice mirror-image drawing, and whad’ya know! That works perfectly for Cycle 1 and ancient civilizations. We know that the Greeks used symmetry in architecture, and we can see this same love of order and balance in their art. Most of their pottery was symmetrical in shape and…
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Cycle 1 Week 1- Egyptian Art
The new Foundations Guide came out this year, but you’ll notice that drawing for weeks 1-6 are the same as in the past. Since Cycle 1 looks at the history of ancient kingdoms, I will be combining the drawing concepts alongside art from ancient civilizations. Week 1 starts out with the basic elements of drawing…