Valued Pumpkin Patches

The students have finished the lesson on creating value with oil pastels. I decided to use this lesson with second grade students. First we read the book "Spookley the Square Pumpkin" as our inspiration and then we really looked at pumpkins. The beginning question about what shape and color are pumpkins quickly changed from "round and orange" to "they can be any shape or color." This is a sample of the items on display throughout the lesson.

The next thing to do was practice using values with our oil pastels.

That was about all we had time for in our first lesson. During the second session, we looked carefully at pumpkin shapes. They aren't round at all! I showed the students how to make a pumpkin with 5 ovals (four of them are hiding behind the first guy.)

Then we shade in the darkest areas with our black, careful not to cover the tops. Some of the students noticed the highlights, so that helped us remember to save the tops for white.

The next step was very difficult for the students. They had to blend the color into the black. Many wanted to color across the pumpkin instead of going with the contour. I had them make little tiny circles all over the black to soften the hard lines.

Then we wiped the edge of the pastel clean and colored in the remainder of the pumpkin.














The final step is highlights. We did a dot on each section and then blended over it with color.

Here are the amazing results!