3rd Grade Spooky Castles with Oil Pastels

This is an all time favorite to teach! All students LOVE to create castles, they all end up looking unique! This is one version, I have on this blog another post with these castles color with chalk pastels.  I do love this version though... oil pastels is really my favorite!

These castles are painted directly with black tempera.  We started by drawing a line with pencil for a ground line, then a rectangle for the entry way. I demonstrate the whole painting, I ask for ideas, they are full of them! From there they get started and paint direct, each section of the building must touch the next. Lots of windows... anything they can think of to add!

I highly recommend the virtual tour of Warwick Castle in Warwick, England. My students LOVED the virtual tour so much, it was difficult to get them in their seats to paint!  

Virtual Tour of Warwick Castle

3rd Grade Spooky Castles with Chalk Pastels

These castles are painted directly with black tempera and colored with chalk pastels, (I have done these with oil pastel too). We started by drawing a line with pencil for a ground line, then a rectangle for the entry way. I demonstrate the whole painting, I ask for ideas, they are full of them! From there they get started and paint direct, each section of the building must touch the next. Lots of windows... anything they can think of to add!

I highly recommend the virtual tour of Warwick Castle in Warwick, England. My students LOVED the virtual tour so much, it was difficult to get them in their seats to paint!  

Warwick Castle Virtual Tour

5th Grade - Fantasy Castles

These Fantasy Castles are inspired by the Disney illustrator Mary Blair 

AND Lisa Congdon, a current illustrator/artist. 

Mary Blair

Lisa Congdon

I completely love any kind of simple shapes in bright colors!  And when I see these ladies art works, I want to jump inside them!  If you go to Disney... you can! It's a Small World is full of Mary Blair's great works from the 50's! I have never been... but hear it is wonderful!  Here are our versions of fantasy castles inspired by these inspiring artists...

 We started with drawing our castles with white Twistables. We used straight edges and circles for a few details, but the rest by hand.

Next we painted, with warm and cool colors. I like to paint this way... 3 tables of warm, three tables of cool... all paintbrushes are cleaned on painting mats, NO WATER! I am a painter, I never clean brushes as I paint, only at the end.  I know everyone has a different system, this one works great for me!  Students can move from table to table when needed.

 Last step, some paintings needed a little more definition, so I threw the oil pastels on the table!  Some students used them a lot, a little or not at all.  I let them decide... a few I highly encourage some cleaning up some confusing areas by outlining the intended shape. They are all very unique!