Father's Day Gifts

The students created a Father's Day gift before we released for the summer. They completed a questionnaire and then drew a picture of their dad to go along with it. Several teachers have asked me recently how I get my students to draw detailed and proportionate pictures. So, here is my basic answer: model, model, model. I am not an artist myself but I model everything for my students. For this particular lesson, I had them fold the paper in half, top to bottom. I instructed them to draw a dot about three fingers down from the top. I then had them draw a dot in the middle of the fold. They then drew the curves of the face from each dot, top to bottom. Then for the shoulders, they drew a curve from the dot on the fold to each corner of the paper. This gave them a foundation for their portrait and the rest was completely up to them.