An on-going dilemma I face is how to help students draw new shapes, without giving them too much help. My current solution is to give them partial templates, so that they all have a good starting place to build upon. With these Monet-inspired Irises, the students were given just the center lower leaf as a template, and they had to follow my instructions to draw the rest of the flower.1. The students used a 12" x 9" piece of paper, and a cardboard template for the lower Iris leaf, which looked a lot like an upside-down duck foot. I had them trace the petal in the center of their paper. Next, two more curved leaves were drawn to the right and left of that petal. Lastly, a center leaf is indicated with just one wavy line on top, and some small stamens were added in the center. After the flower was done, more were added to the right and left as space allowed.
2. When the drawings were complete, they were traced with a black Sharpie marker. I've learned that water-soluble markers will look OK initially, but bleed into the pastels over time. Not good if you want to keep all the nice detail your students have drawn.
3. After the drawings were complete, students were allowed to use blue or purple oil pastels to color their flowers, along with orange or yellow stamens. White pastel etched over the petals added a smudgy, Impressionist look to their art.
