For this project, I showed a powerpoint on Marc Chagall and talked about how he was inspired by his dreams to create his artwork. Check out the book Dreamer from the Village by Michelle Markel. (Children's biography on Chagall). First day we brainstormed dream ideas. Questions asked were: 1)What are you dreams for the future? 2)What do you daydream about? and 3) What strange dreams have you had at night? This gets the students thinking.
We used these figure drawing templates the first day to create a pose for ourself in our dream. We drew figure and details in pencil then outlined in sharpie. Next class I demonstrated color washing. I used watered down red, yellow, and blue tempera and let the kids mix to get secondary colors. Final day, I demonstrated how to blend color pencils with gradation technique, and let them finish coloring in. The last step was to write a little description sentence about their dream on a cloud (that I pre-cut for them). These turned out nice...fun way to do a self-portrait that's not your typical face and shoulders. By the way, Marc Chagall's America Windows will be returning to the Art Institute of Chicago starting November 1st. You may remember them from Ferris Beuller's Day Off! http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/exhibition/Chagall
