Street Art Sketchbooks

This is a great lesson to kick off a new year, quarter, or semester, for a few reasons:  One- it helps us familiarize ourselves with a new group of kids (name learnin' can be tough!), two: it is simple enough to provide success for just about any student (fifth grade and up), and three- it's "cool" (or so they tell me).



I have my middle school students create sketchbooks at the beginning of the quarter (I have my kids every day for one quarter, and then we switch groups).  This helps for the lag time they have in the morning as they are just walking in, big time.  It is also a good space to help them plan out their art before a big project, and to get the "creative juices flowing" through interesting prompts.

For their covers, I though it would be nice to be able to see their names BIG and BOLD right on the front.  This usually takes 3 to 4 45 min. class periods, along with introduction to the room, procedures,  and the rubric I use.

I have the students glue the list of sketch assignments right into their books, along with a link to the class Instagram, and a copy of the filled out rubric.





After this, the kids begin by drawing a big "comic book shape" that takes up their whole paper:



I then demo how to draw TALL, PLAIN block letters.



From there, the kids can decide how to "jazz" up their letters, using the regular block letters as a base for the future design.  In the past, I've shown this video to help demonstrate this technique.



Once they have it how they like, I have the kids trace the fancy letters with sharpie, and then erase the original block letters.



Some also choose to add heavier lines on one side to add dimension to their name.



From there, it is time to color.  We used Prisma colored pencil for these, taking a peek at the color wheel to see what would look best.  I let the kids get as creative as they like with this.  Some add pictures, or a design in the background, and others keep it plain with a solid background color.



After coloring, students cut around their "comic shapes", glue them down onto the front of the sketchbooks with glue sticks, and then give them a coat of Mod Podge, for good measures.









And that's that!  Thanks for stopping :)