Art Challenges
for Anytime
These challenges are meant for review purposes.
Have fun and remember what you have already learned!
If you complete a challenge please email a picture of it to asloan@sachem.edu
Lately, people are spending more time around their neighborhoods. I see people out walking, taking their pets for some exercise, riding their bikes and skateboards, and even just driving around in their cars. Give people something uplifting, nice and colorful to look at when they are passing your house! Make a rainbow and display it so people walking past can enjoy it. You can use whatever you want to make your rainbow. Crayons, colored pencils, Chalk, paint, or cut up magazines and use glue to make a collage. My daughter has started playing a game searching for rainbows as we stroll or drive around! We made one together and hung it on our front door!
Merlin is a powerful magician who helped to shape King Arthur's personality as his teacher. occasionally he will conjure a MYSTERY NUMBER here on this site! write the mystery number on a blank sheet of paper nice and big and change the number into a drawing of anything you imagine! You can turn the paper any way you like until you imagine something out of the number. Draw in pencil to start and then color it in however you like! Can't wait for the next Magic Merlin Mystery Number? Ask someone in your family for a random number. (This was a game my family played whenever we were waiting for food at restaurants when I was growing up). Have fun!
Kindergarten: Color can be a powerful tool for an artist and it is important that we know our primary and secondary colors! Using this template fill in the primary and secondary colors where they belong. Make sure the primary colors are in the circles that are connected by the lines and that the secondary colors are between the primary colors that mix to create them. Make sure you color your wheel in as neatly as possible. when you are finished you will have a color wheel just like the ones hanging in the Cayuga Art Room right there where you do your artwork at home! If you are unable to print this then use the bottom of a can to make your own. You can use a ruler or the side of a book to make straight lines connecting the primary colors.
Fun Fact: When artists were first designing super heroes and their costumes they always used the primary colors for the heroes and the secondary colors for the villains. Check your favorite superheroes and villains to see what colors they are wearing!
1st grade: Superheroes often live in made up places. Batman, Batgirl and Robin fight crime in the city of Gotham. Aquaman is from an underwater kingdom. Superman lives and works as a newspaper reporter in Metropolis. Thor lives in Asgard. Get a paper and a dollar bill. Trace the dollar onto the paper twice. You will design a special edition 2 dollar bill for the superhero home of your choice. Think of someone important to that place that you want to celebrate or honor by drawing them on the front of the 2 dollar bill. Think of some place or important building to put into the center of the back. Remember to write how much it's worth and the name of the place somewhere in your design. Like all of our money says "The United States of America" on it. You should also include important symbols of the place and detailed designs. Cut and glue the front to the back. Remember to place a drawing in-between when it comes time to glue if you want to create a "watermark" that can only be seen when you hold your design to the light.
Check out this website about the art of US currency for a reminder of some of the things we that go into designing paper money: Currency Art School
2nd grade: Song writers are often thought of as heroes. Draw a picture to go along with one of your favorite songs. When you color it in use only warm or cool colors depending on the mood of the song. It only matters that the colors you choose make sense to the feeling of the song and not to the stuff that you drew. As a silly example, if the song I chose was Row, Row, Row Your Boat I might draw a boat with someone happily rowing. I would color this in with colors from the warm color group to show they are happy. Yellow is a color that makes people feel happy. That means I could not color the water blue although we all know water is usually a blueish color. I would have to use a warm color instead.
3rd grade: Take something round like the bottom of a can and trace twenty circles onto some papers. Your challenge is to fill each of the circles with a different pattern. Use some of the techniques using lines, shapes and dots. I remember a guy I watched who made 100 different square patterns!!! You can do it!!! If you finish the 20 and want to keep making more, go for it!
4th Grade: Take a paper and draw a maze using overlapping parallel curves. Once you fill the paper make sure your overlaps make sense and you can tell which curve appears to be on top of the other and which appears to be going underneath. Once you have drawn it go over your pencil lines with a black pen or marker. Next choose complimentary colors (colors opposite one another on the color wheel) and put one in the negative space and the other in the curved pathways of your maze. Make sure you color the pathways lightly and the negative space dark.
5th Grade: Get a paper and pencil and draw a portrait of someone in your family. If you prefer you can find a mirror and do a self portrait. Remember that heads are not circles and to measure so you know you are drawing features like eyes and lips in the right place and in proportion! Remember that you should start drawing lightly with 'ghost lines'. Begin with an upside down egg shape, measure and draw a horizontal and vertical line halfway through the egg. that halfway horizontal line is where the eyes will be. Keep breaking the spaces in half with more horizontal lines to find the nose and lips and hairline. There are some tutorials online that show a few different ways to grid out the basic proportions of the human face if you really forget or get stuck.