Popcorn Drawing

From a great post here: http://www.teachkidsart.net/popcorn-drawing-observation-imagination/

Popcorn Drawing — Observation & Imagination

by Cheryl Trowbridge on July 2, 2012 in Colored Pencil, Drawing, Imagination, Lessons, Process, Subject

Have you ever looked at a cloud and seen an ani­mal or some other ran­dom image?  Most every­one has used their imag­i­na­tion to “find” things in clouds, and pop­corn offers this same cre­ative expe­ri­ence!  This is a great les­son for 5th grade and up.  Make sure you cre­ate a sam­ple to illus­trate the steps… a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words here!  After doing this les­son, your stu­dents (and you!) will never look at a piece of pop­corn (or a bear sit­ting on a rock, wear­ing a red ban­dana!) the same way again!

Mate­ri­als:

• 9x12 black con­struc­tion paper
• pop­corn (at least 2 pieces per student)
• white craft glue (Aleene’s Tacky Glue is my favorite)
• white char­coal pen­cil or Pris­ma­color draw­ing pencil
• Magic Rub eraser
• 9x12 trac­ing paper
• No.2 graphite pencil
• fine point marker, any color except black (I like to use a col­ored “F” Sharpie or a Cray­ola water base marker.)
• 9x12 white con­struc­tion paper

Direc­tions:

1. Pass out 2 (or more) pieces of pop­corn to each stu­dent.  Let them choose one to draw and one (or more) to eat!

2. Squirt a dime size blob of glue near the top of your 9x12 black paper. (I went around and did this as stu­dents were “exam­in­ing” their pop­corn for the most inter­est­ing side to draw!)  Place pop­corn on the glue.

3. Use a white pen­cil to draw the pop­corn (as large as pos­si­ble) below the pop­corn you glued to the paper.  Press harder on the light­est areas and less hard in the shad­owed areas. (It can be help­ful to make a value scale using a white pen­cil on black paper to prac­tice mak­ing a range of val­ues. Explain to stu­dents that this is the oppo­site of work­ing with a graphite pen­cil, where press­ing harder pro­duces a darker value. You may also need to review con­tour draw­ing prin­ci­ples if you haven’t done any obser­va­tion draw­ing in a while.) 

4. Then, lay trac­ing paper on top of your white on black draw­ing.  Use a col­ored marker to trace the out­side shape (con­tour) and any impor­tant lines on the inside.

5. Next, turn your trac­ing paper over to the back.  You’ll be able to see your col­ored marker lines through it.  Trace over the top of these lines with a reg­u­lar No.2 graphite pen­cil.  Press hard so your lines will be nice and dark.

6. Now, lay your trac­ing paper, pen­cil side down, on top of your white paper.  Trace over your marker lines using your No.2 pen­cil.  If you used a col­ored marker for step #4, it will be easy to see where you’ve traced and where you still need to!

7. Lift off the trac­ing paper and you’ll see a faint copy of your draw­ing on the white paper.  Turn your paper dif­fer­ent direc­tions and use your imag­i­na­tion to find an inter­est­ing image in your pop­corn, if you haven’t already!

8. Finally, use col­ored pen­cils to fin­ish your draw­ing, adding any details you need so your viewer can see what you saw in your popcorn!