Stacked Birds Art Project

What’s more spring-like than colourful birds? This project will have your students working upwards, rather than across a page. With bright colours and so many shapes, your students are sure to show off their creativity!

Originally found this project here.

Timeline: 60 minutes

Materials:

• Paper cut into a long strip (I used an 11x17 cut in half along the long side)

• Pencil

• Eraser

• Sharpie (Thin & Thick)

• Tempera paint

• Paint brush

Steps:

*Before starting project, cut your paper strips

• Draw a curved line for the grass with a pencil.

• Then, draw the birds, starting with the largest bird on the bottom. Draw the body first, then add a beak, eye, wing and tail feathers. There is no right or wrong way to do this. Students will have complete freedom to design their birds in the shapes they desire!

  • Don’t make the wings or beaks too small, you’ll have to paint them, so depending how small your paintbrushes are, this could be a challenge.

• Continue to draw the birds stacked on each other. You’ll probably have room for 4-5 birds, making each one smaller than the next (like the balls for a snowman).

• Use a thin Sharpie to trace their pencil lines and then erase the pencil.

• Paint the birds.

  • Think about the colour of your sky. If you are going to use a light blue paint, don’t paint one of the birds the same light blue.

• Paint the sky.

  • Make sure the birds are fairly dry before starting the sky, you don’t want the colours to bleed.

• Once the paint is dry, use a regular Sharpie to trace over the black lines again since they’ll be slightly covered up now by the paint.