Portraits in Charcoal
While we know that prehistoric man used charcoal as a drawing medium, we can't know for sure what they drew! We know the type of artwork they did on cave walls, but perhaps there were some early skilled artists who used charcoal to make portraits!
With this as a premise--and capitalizing on the students' interest in learning how to draw realistic faces--we spent several days experimenting with charcoal as a drawing material. After learning how to blend to create different many different values, and after practicing drawing facing in proper proportions, 6th grade students had the opportunity to create self-portraits or to draw imaginary cave men and women!
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