Chinese Dragons

The second class for the summer is called Around the World and is a sampling of art from across the globe.

I had for months planned on doing a totally different oriental project but something kept drawing (ha! No pun intended) me towards dragons, I found this lesson off Deep Space Sparkle, tweaked it a bit, used different medium and the more difficult example and was ASTONISHED with the results!!

When the kids arrived, we all shared what we knew about dragons. Then, we compared our knowledge of dragon physique to Chinese dragons and noticed quite a difference.

To make our dragons, we did two practice runs. I gave each kid a 1ftx2ft skinny piece of paper (nothing fancy just paper cut in half from my large sketch pad I use for live examples.) With oil pastel we practiced our dragons starting with the head and working our way down the body, lastly adding details like spikes & scales.  

The second practice was with ink, more for them just to get the feel of the fluidity before they used it on the canvas.

When they felt comfortable with the ink they picked up their canvases.

Next, the easels went up as well as three paint colors of their choice.

Last, reoutlining to really make their colors pop and then to draw the Chinese symbol for dragon which I had printed out for them to look at. I let them use my paint pens for this part. 

And here they are! 

A surprising little thing I learned during this lesson is that if you have a left handed kid, have them start their dragon head on the right side rather than the left. They'll be dragging the brush across their body which is easier for them and they're less likely to smudge anything because their hand won't rub up against any fresh ink or paint!