Colored Pencil, Crayon, Marker Ideas from Faber-Castell

A great resource for art project ideas is on the Faber-Castell web site. Browse through the many techniques for using colored pencils, wax crayons, oil pastels, paint and markers. Something there has to spark an idea for an art project.

Ideas for Drawing and Colouring with Pencils, Crayons, and Paint

Merging colours is one idea on the Faber-Castell web site that I thought would work for an art appreciation lesson.

Merging colours

Fibre-tip pens can be used in many of the same ways as colour pencils, and they are also useful for learning about secondary colours. For this we use a pointillist technique, with lots of little dots. Try it with just the primary colours red, blue, and yellow. If you stand back, then the individual dots are no longer perceived as such, but merge in the eye to form secondary colours. This effect is also used in colour printing, as a magnifying glass will show. Oranges coloured with red and yellow dots appear orange, yellow-and-blue leaves look green. This technique is very suitable for pictures of natural objects, sketched out beforehand with a soft pencil or a pale yellow fibre-tip pen.

History of the Pencil

Ever wonder how the pencil came to be? Faber-Castell has a great page on their web site titled Pencil Discovery and Innovation.

The beginning of the pencil is explained here from the Faber-Castell web site:

The origins of today's pencil goes back to 1565, when a grey-black glistending substance was found in Borrowdale, in the Cumberland hills of England. It was said to be a 'lead' coloured material, greasy to touch an quick to stain the fingers. This substance became known as black-lead, an was found to be more convenient for a writing an drawing than pen and ink, as it's marks could be easily rubbed out.

This would be paired great with an Escher print:

M.C. Escher, Drawing Hands (1948) 

M.C. Escher Official Web Site

Franz Marc in 3 Dimensions

Love Franz Marc. This short video would be great to show after telling the students about Marc. Follow with a discussion of the elements and Marc's art.
Music is beautiful also.