Easy to Understand Line Exercise

Line Art
Medium: Black pens (sharpies)

Reason For Lesson: To help the students understand that lines come in all forms (i.e., straight, wavey, hatching, circles, etc. and that you can create art using only lines.  This lesson can be taught at any grade level.  The lower the grade level use larger tip writing instruments.  The picture you see here represents a 4th grade lesson. 

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Classroom Time: 45 minutes to 1 hour

Materials: 12x18 paper, black sharpie, scratch paper for practice

Preparation: Very little.  Collect paper and sharpies. Decide what the students will be drawing and provide some ideas and samples of some options.  (i.e., turtles, sea lions, fish, etc.)

Instructions for Teaching Class:   
Open a discussion about lines.  Discuss that a line starts at one point and ends at another and it’s not always a straight line. Lines can be jagged, dashed, curvy, thin, bold, swirl and so on. Have the class warm up by making several of these line.   Given the students a sample of a picture with various types of lines.  With a 2x2 frame cut out (located in Art Supply room), have them isolate an area and draw the lines they see.  After the warm-up, give some samples of animal outlines and  ask the students to pick an animal to draw on their paper.  Instruct the students that the animal should to take up the entire area of the 12x18 paper.  Have the students divide the animal into 5-8 different areas.  Within each area instruct them to make different types of lines in each of the divided areas.  In addition to creating many different types of lines encourage them to make areas of dark and light.  

This lesson can be adapted for upper grade levels.  Use a larger point sharpie and large paper (12x18)  for lower level grades (1st, 2nd and 3rd).  Use a finer point sharpie for the upper grades (4th, 5th and 6th) and a 81/2 x 11 paper.

Credit: Part of this lesson were adapted from the Art Attack Program