Keith Haring Inspired Art - Lines, Movement, and Variety

I like to start off the school year discussing line.. always a good basic start to most drawings. My fifth graders are line experts so a quick review was all we needed.  I first introduced Keith Haring through a book called I Wish I Didn't Have to Sleep. Has some excellent illustrations of his work and pointers about his style. We also did a little critiquing of the work we saw.

From there, students created simplified body forms of 3 'break dancers'. We attempted to show movement with chosens positions of arms and legs. We drew with pencil and colored in with markers.  Our second day we discussed variety. Students then began drawing a variety of lines around each dancer. This actually took 2 days total on 9 x 12" paper. Students had to be very patient, but the finished products were definitely worth it!

Materials for this project: pencils and erasers, 9x12" paper, and crayola markers in a variety of colors

This project took 3 forty minute classes to complete.

I love these!