Ornamental Corn & Crayon Resist

4th graders had one 50 minute session to create these subtly colored ornamental corn pieces. They had real corn to look at as they sketched and colored enlarged ovals to represent the kernels. (We talked about how Georgia O'Keeffe magnified flowers in her art.) Their goal was to have just 2 or 3 lines of magnified kernels.

Students sketched their large ovals first, then made a white oval in the center of each oval where the light was hitting the kernel. Next, using crayons, they shaded from light to dark to get the illusion of depth in each kernel. They left the background white because they were going to paint over the whole thing with black watercolor for all the deep shadows. 

I find that getting kids to really enlarge can be challenging. This time I had an ear of ornamental corn displayed on the big screen with the document camera. I placed a 1 inch view finder on a section of the kernels so the students could see what they were trying to replicate on their 4" squares. That helped most of them to think "MAGNIFY".

This student really got into mixing and blending his crayon colors to achieve the subtlety of the real ornamental corn colors!!

It makes me happy to walk down this corridor of the school and see these greeting me!!