Fantastic Feathers

First term, and a three week block of observational drawings.  Not quite finished but too good not to share!

I wanted to get the pupils to really look at details of small, unfamiliar objects.  Feathers seemed to be the perfect thing.  We started off looking at the linear patterns and recreated the feathers with soft pencils and water soluble crayons.

Peacock feathers next, what a gift!  Looking at colour and pattern we used a mixture of pens, watercolour, water soluble graphite and soft pencil.  New words now added to our vocabulary include iridescent, rainbow like.....they sure are.  I have offered £1 for every child that includes it in their next story!  Shall I start saving?

I have really enjoyed floating around my schools with armfuls of peacock feathers! 

 Attention seeking behaviour or what?

Some of the infants got involved too, can you spot which drawings are theirs?  

Looking at texture and tone now, with white feathers, chalk and black pen on black paper.  Studies too of the best little spotty Guinea Fowl feathers.  

We drew the feathers twice the size to include the detail and introduce the idea of scale.

Some of the classes used masking fluid with watercolour to try and reproduce the patterns of dots on the Guinea Fowl feathers.

I plan to make these drawings into wee books - next term....