Monster Selfies

This time of year, many middle schoolers have turned into little monsters.  Some more tolerable than others!  In order to keep their interest in projects, it is a good idea to have smaller elements go together to make a larger work. These monster group selfies are just the thing!

Students begin by drawing several small sketches of monsters from this book. It is an excellent source to draw from, as it breaks the monsters down into easy lines and shapes, making it less intimidating to draw.  Students then combined different parts of monsters to design their own. We also designed robots and cartoon characters for variety.

 Students were then to choose 20 of their favorite sketches to enlarge to about 4 by 5, creating a row of about 4 monsters at the bottom of their 12 by 18 inch paper.

As they finished a row, the monsters were staggered and positioned behind the previous row so that it would look like a group photo.  Each paper would have at least 20 creatures to fill the space. Some classes were also allowed to look up characters on their iPads as inspiration.

Students then chose to use colored pencils, markers, and/or pencil to finish.  We talked about how to shade with a marker that was drying up and how to create texture also.

When finished with this assignment, students either made a felt creature or a cardboard robot inspired from their drawings. You can see these here and here.