Leaves!

These projects focused on observational and contour drawing.  All of the classes did a number of practice drawings first.
The other focus was analogous colors.  I love teaching about analogous colors in the fall because the fall leaf colors are great examples.  The students painted washes of analogous fall color combinations and learned about tertiary colors (yellow-green, yellow-orange, etc).  They did their final drawings over the dry painted papers and traced in pen or thin sharpie.  The students added color to the leaves with colored pencils as the final touch.
I also had access to leaf texture tiles that they could use for rubbings.  The students added on another element to their pictures by rubbing the tiles with black chunk crayons consciously rather than randomly.

These pictures are a slight variation I did with the third graders.  They also focused on overlapping.  

Examples from this year's variation of analogous painted leaves and observational drawing. 

We focused on making 'super large' leaves this time around.