Drawing Animals on Colored Paper

Lesson Summary

In this lesson, students will illustrate animals on colored paper. Colour can communicate things, such as emotion, personality and temperature. This drawing technique enhances the mood of an illustration while creating depth.

Lesson Objectives

• Practice the technique of drawing on colored paper.

• Learn how to express the energy of an animal with color.

• Understand how color communicates feeling and temperature.

What you do

The class will make two animal drawings. The first one with black and white colored pencils and second one in color. Students may use markers, colored pencils and gouache paint to illustrate their animals. This method of drawing requires an artist to paint shadows with dark colours and make highlights with lighter ones.

1. Select an Animal. Choose an animal that you want to draw.

2. Choose Color Paper. Select a paper color that is the dominate color of your subject. For example, choose grey paper for a grey elephant or green paper for a green crocodile.

3. Sketch. Lightly sketch your animal onto your colored paper with a pencil.

4. Outline. Draw or ink the outlines of your animal. When you get the drawing of the animal right, everything else will fall into place.

5. Shadows. Shade in the shadows using dark cool colors. *Get the shading right and the colors will fall into place.

6. Highlights. Add highlights using warm light colors. *Think about the light source when shading your animal and creating highlights.

7. Opaque White. For the finishing touches, use opaque white paint to convey the brightest highlights. This will have an effect of making your artwork look as if it were popping off of the paper.

Terminology

• Primary Colors - They include red, blue and yellow. They are the three colors from which all other colors can be obtained by mixing.

• Secondary Colors - Include orange, green and purple. Colors resulting from the mixing of two primary colors together.

• Warm Colors - Colors that are associated with the sun, warmth and fire. They evoke warm feelings in people. Yellow, red, orange and different shades of these colors are warm colors.

• Cool Colors - Colors that are associated with water, cold and ice. These colors leave a cold effect on people. Green, blue, purple and shades of these colors are cool colors.

• Opaque - Not able to be seen through; not transparent.