Falling Leaves in Art Class

Well, it's officially the first day of fall - and around here, the leaves are already changing. Fall is my favourite season - LOVE the beautiful leaves and crisp weather! To bring a little bit of fall into our classroom, our art this week captured the feelings of the season. We are still studying colour and lines in visual arts. This project was perfect!

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We started with discussing warm and cool colours. Students had to choose three of each. I then gave them a sheet of leaf outlines (I found it here) which they had to cut out to make leaf templates. They then traced the leaves onto their papers (I let them choose whatever leaves they wanted, and they could draw wherever they wanted on the page). Then it was time for a quick compass lesson. Starting with a small circle in the corner, they had to draw concentric circles. When they couldn't stretch their compass any further, they started again on the opposite side of the page. I had them colour the cool background first - alternating their colours in a pattern. They then had to fill in the leaves, alternating the warm colours. I gave students the option of using markers or pencil crayons. If using pencil crayons, be sure to instruct the students to press quite hard - the effect looks best with brighter colours. I really like how this student used a marker over the original lines. Beautiful!