"What Would You Store in Your Jar?" - art project - Brief Article

Arts & Activities, May, 2003 by Carol A. Zerbe

by Karen Skophammer, April 1996

This particular project on drawing jars and their contents struck me as a great way to expand my basic drawing lesson, the first project I teach my fourth grade students in September. I begin with a lesson we call our "Pencil Warm-Up." We use manila paper 12" x 18" that students fold in half and then into quarters. The blocks are numbered 1 to 4. With a 4B pencil and all eraser, we begin different exercises. In one block, we shade a value scale. In the second block, students draw cubes, spheres and cones. In a third block, cylinders are drawn. (This is done while looking at actual forms.) I tell the students to draw their ideal breakfast in values of gray in the fourth block.

After this drawing session, the students have been well prepared for the jar lesson. I set up a still life of four jars. Two of them have items inside so that students can see how objects appear stacked inside the glass. We discuss items that one might collect in jars. At this point, my lesson departs from the one published in 1996. I tell the children they must draw three jars on a table or a tablecloth. Several types of media are allowed: watercolor, gold tempera, markers, crayons and colored pencils. Emphasis is placed on the drawing of the jars and their contents. This was a fun project and the jars were full of many surprise collections.

Carol A. Zerbe, Lower Gwynedd Elementary School, Ambler, Pa.