Welcome to Our Exploring the World of Art Lessons for Kids Homeschool Curriculum

Course Sample for Our Exploring the World of Art Lessons for Kids Homeschool Curriculum

To view a full sample of this course, click here.

Unit One:
Colored-Pencil Drawing – Animals

In this project, we will create a colored pencil drawing of an animal. Supplies needed for this project:

• Sketching pencil
• Eraser
• Sketching paper*
• Set of colored pencils*

*Most sketching paper works well with colored pencils although there is special paper designed specifically for colored pencils if you’d rather get that. Check what the package says. If it says “works well with all dry mediums,” it will work for both pencil and colored pencil.

*You can purchase a good set of colored pencils at any craft store. I don’t recommend getting a cheap brand such as Rose-Art. Crayola colored pencils are fairly high quality as are others such as Sargent Art. If you want an extremely high quality brand, you can go with Prismacolor, although it is also expensive.

Lesson One: Pencil Sketch

Supplies needed:

• Drawing pencil
• Eraser
• Drawing paper

This week’s project is a colored-pencil drawing of an animal of your choice. Today’s lesson will be the basic sketch of the animal. After you gather your supplies, you will need to choose a picture of an animal. You can look in a book or on the Internet for this. Try to find a colorful animal or one with a lot of color surrounding it. For example, you could choose a plainer animal such as an elephant, but it can still be a colorful picture if it’s an elephant in the savanna. If you are able to, print off your picture roughly the same size that you want to draw it; this way it is easier to get the correct proportions on your own drawing.

You can choose to draw this sketch with colored pencil if you wish, but colored pencil does not erase very well so I would recommend using a graphite pencil for this first line drawing. Set your photograph close to your paper and look at it a lot while you draw. The more you look at it, the more familiar you will become with the shapes and lines in it and the better your own drawing will be.

Before we start, please remember that there are no mistakes in art. This is hard to believe if a project does not turn out as you had imagined it, but it is true. Your drawing will be unique and completely your own creation.