Colorful Paper Birds & an Intro to Composition, Space & Shape

This lesson covers the elements of shape, space and composition and introduces students to some of Charley Harper's bird illustrations. It is targeted to students in either 7th or 8th grade and takes about 3 to 4 days to complete, I usually teach this lesson once i have a bin full of colored paper scraps that I can use for it. The handout included in this lesson is a very valuable resource and will be the most helpful tool for students when they are creating their own paper bird designs. There are 2 included videos that i use when teaching this project, one shows how to draw a bird by breaking it down into easy to draw shapes and the other shows some of Charley Harper's artwork.

Since there are 2 videos included in this lesson I did not create a prezi presentation to introduce it, I do however use the pdf teacher examples and break them down and explain the project that way.

Here is a break down of the resources that are included in this lesson:

Lesson Plan- This has the lesson broken down into easy to understand steps and includes a list of materials needed and approximately how long the lesson should take to introduce.

2 Related Video- As i mentioned above the first video is meant to be watched and followed along with so students understand the basics of drawing a bird before they start to work with colored paper. The second video is a montage of Charley Harper's graphic design work and I like to watch this and pause it so student can point out what animals they see where and then explain what shapes it is composed of.

Rubric- I pass this rubric out at the beginning of each lesson so students understand what they will be graded on and what is expected of them. If you'd like to adapt the lesson to more advanced students then follow the instructions above for older age groups. The rubric is front and back and only takes up half a sheet of paper, it also has a self reflective part at the end for students to fill out. Students should turn the rubric in with their finished project and I will put their final grade on it and return them both.

Handout- The handout is an easy to follow graphic that shows how each bird (native & tropical) is broken down into its most basic shapes and when combined they create a piece of art.


Student Examples- There are 5 student example artworks in progress and 3 more showing what the art projects looked like when displayed in the hallway.

Teacher Examples- There are 4 teacher examples, one in vertical composition, one with tropical birds, one with N. American birds, and the last example has a few errors in it that i like to point out to students

* ALL documents except for the handout are in Word doc. format so they can be tweaked and edited to your liking.
Cheers