Beautiful Horses

This lesson is based on the book by Van Camp and illustrated by Littlechild. I had the idea to combine some of the book's ideas with ideas of Chagall.

Materials:

Paper, cut to 12X15
Oil pastels
Liquid watercolors
Permanent markers
Foam scrap booking dots.

1. Read book to students. Discuss the idea of fantasy and the way the horses are depicted.
2. This can be done with or without a border. We did a simple one inch border with one inch squares.
3.. Do guided drawing for background. Divide the paper into three sections going in diagonals. Use oil pastels to draw very simple lines and shapes, like moons, suns, flower, bird, etc. Emphasize a kind of dreamy quality, like Chagall.They can turn the paper upside down and sideways when drawing shapes. Also emphasize drawing simple outlines of shapes.
4. In one of the three sections, they can draw lines or patterns to fill it in.
5. Do watercolor washes over the pastel drawing.
6. Instruct on drawing a horse with basic shapes, on a separate piece of paper. The horse should be about 6 inches long. They can draw the mane and tail how they wish, and add color and simple lines and shapes with oil pastel or permanent markers.
7. They should cut out the horse carefully and place on the foam dots to make it stand out from the background.