How to Draw Gnomes! Middle School Nature Drawing + Cartooning Art Lesson

Middle School Drawing + a Cartooning Lesson! Double the FUN! Students will enjoy this clever drawing activity that includes the fun twist of adding an easy-to-create, hidden cartoon-style gnome or pixie!

⭐Teach Cartooning and introduce Observational Drawing all at once!

This fairy-tale theme makes the drawing more student-friendly and lighthearted, while still covering many important art concepts:

• Students will practice drawing objects from nature with more realism than they might from memory by being introduced to observational drawing skills.
• Students will use the art element Space in a composition to create a sense of depth with overlapping and color emphasis.
• Students will be introduced to simple cartooning techniques.
• Students will apply and practice colored pencil value shading
• Introduction to contour drawing and studying the edges of a shape to assist the drawing process.
• This lesson will work well with students from grades 5-12. It is easily adaptable for either a traditional art classroom or for distance learning file delivery!

⭐A Contour Drawing Challenge

• After learning how to create easy gnomes and fairies, students were given many photo examples of mushrooms, flowers, leaves, and insects to study. (Included)
• The challenge was to not draw these objects from memory but to really try to draw the shapes they were actually looking at.
• The shapes still could be simplified, but the goal was for students to adjust the way they drew their shapes from nature, based upon the observational study of a natural object's contour edges.

⭐This 48 page, PDF, creative drawing lesson includes:

- 9 page, Step-by-Step Lesson Plan with pacing

-CORE National Visual Arts Standards

-"How to Draw Gnomes and Pixie Fairies" 15 pages, printable Cartooning Packet

-2 worksheets to assist the design process and to practice and create a final gnome caricature

-6 reproducible, color photo resources to assist students in observational drawing studies

-5 worksheets for students to use to practice observational drawing.

-Step-by-step Instructional Handout to provide students with assistance in designing their final Nature Drawing

-Teacher and student-made examples

-"6 Ways Artists Create the Illusion of Space' Handout

- "Colored Pencil and Marker Techniques to Try" Handout/ Teacher Demo
Reference Sheet

- " A Wee Bit of History About Gnomes" Enrichment Reading Handout

- " Name Your Gnome and Write a Funny Short Story About Your Gnome"
extension activity

⭐Distance Learning, student-tested, art lesson! I created and used this fun drawing project during Spring 2020 Covid Distance Learning! It was a student favorite!

⭐For Distance Learning, I sent the lesson to students in 4 parts over the course of 2 weeks.

•In a traditional classroom setting, I would have added an additional lesson, with a practice session, to increase contour drawing skills. I probably would have brought in actual mushrooms in a clear box) and leaves for students to try to draw.

However, I was pleased with the drawings that my 7th and 8th-grade students created at home! Many students also expressed that they thought this was a fun drawing lesson and they liked their final drawings! Yay!

Have fun with this student-tested, colored pencil and marker drawing lesson!

It is easy to make this drawing "seasonal"!

A fun Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer Art project option!

This is a lesson I will definitely use again with my art school students. I hope you enjoy it too!

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