Popcorn Drawing - Observation & Imagination

Have you ever looked at a cloud and seen an animal or some other random image?  Most everyone has used their imagination to "find" things in clouds, and popcorn offers this same creative experience!  This is a great lesson for 5th grade and up.  Make sure you create a sample to illustrate the steps... a picture is worth a thousand words here!  After doing this lesson, your students (and you!) will never look at a piece of popcorn (or a bear sitting on a rock, wearing a red bandana!) the same way again!

Materials:

• 9x12 black construction paper
• popcorn (at least 2 pieces per student)
• white craft glue (Aleene's Tacky Glue is my favorite)
• white charcoal pencil or Prismacolor drawing pencil
• Magic Rub eraser
• 9x12 tracing paper
• No.2 graphite pencil
• fine point marker, any color except black (I like to use a colored "F" Sharpie or a Crayola water base marker.)
• 9x12 white construction paper

Directions:

1. Pass out 2 (or more) pieces of popcorn to each student.  Let them choose one to draw and one (or more) to eat!

2. Squirt a dime size blob of glue near the top of your 9x12 black paper. (I went around and did this as students were "examining" their popcorn for the most interesting side to draw!)  Place popcorn on the glue.

3. Use a white pencil to draw the popcorn (as large as possible) below the popcorn you glued to the paper.  Press harder on the lightest areas and less hard in the shadowed areas. (It can be helpful to make a value scale using a white pencil on black paper to practice making a range of values. Explain to students that this is the opposite of working with a graphite pencil, where pressing harder produces a darker value. You may also need to review contour drawing principles if you haven't done any observation drawing in a while.) 

4. Then, lay tracing paper on top of your white on black drawing.  Use a colored marker to trace the outside shape (contour) and any important lines on the inside.

5. Next, turn your tracing paper over to the back.  You'll be able to see your colored marker lines through it.  Trace over the top of these lines with a regular No.2 graphite pencil.  Press hard so your lines will be nice and dark.

6. Now, lay your tracing paper, pencil side down, on top of your white paper.  Trace over your marker lines using your No.2 pencil.  If you used a colored marker for step #4, it will be easy to see where you've traced and where you still need to!

7. Lift off the tracing paper and you'll see a faint copy of your drawing on the white paper.  Turn your paper different directions and use your imagination to find an interesting image in your popcorn, if you haven't already!

8. Finally, use colored pencils to finish your drawing, adding any details you need so your viewer can see what you saw in your popcorn!

What types of objects have you used to do observation-imagination drawings?