Polar Bears - drawing with charcoal, shading things that are white

A common request I get from students is to learn how to draw animals, so I decided to fulfill it. 

This lesson served a variety of purposes (i.e. exposing students to new drawing tools and shading white objects) and providing the students structured freedom. 

The great amount of the choice the students led them to take great care

and pride in their picture right up to the end.

I did this with 6th grade but I would recommend it for 4th-6th.

Some of the introductory images I provided the students can be found on my pinterest board here. 

The requirements were:

-to work from a photograph with a full polar bear

-choose white or grey paper to work on

-start with pencil

-demonstrate shading & texture

-it needs to be apparent the bear is on a ground and not flying

The options were:

-drawing pencils

-charcoal pencil

-pressed charcoal

-white colored pencil

-white chalk

Most of the students tried out the charcoal at least minimally. This lesson worked great because the more adventurous students were able to be more experimental and the more apprehensive students were able to work more cautiously. 

Some of the introductory images I provided the students can be found on my pinterest board here.