Welcome to The Helpful Art Teacher, an interdisciplinary website linking visual arts to math, social studies, science and language arts.

Learning how to draw means learning to see. A good art lesson teaches us not only to create but to look at, think about and understand our world through art.

Please click on my page to see my personal artwork and artist statement: http://thehelpfulartteacher.blogspot.com/p/the-art-of-rachel-wintembe.html

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Sunday, December 14, 2014

Tiny Planets, inspired by The Little Prince and Asteroid B612



Illustrations from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Little Prince on Asteroid B612




To read a brief biography of 
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry click here:

The Little Prince has always been one of my favorite childhood stories. I was reminded of it recently when I discovered the iPhone app 
I have long been a fan of the app 
so I started busily downloading all the 360s I have created over the years and converting them into 'Little Prince' style asteroids. Here are some of my favorites:





















I created this asteroid from one of my own paintings. It reminds me of the planet in 'The Little Prince', over run with baobab trees.


Imagine you've discovered a new planet in a faraway solar system. You find out that there is life on this new planet. What would the animals on your new planet look like? Where would they live? How would their bodies be uniquely adapted to their environment? Use the links below to help develop your own ideas.








If you are using 'Switch Zoo' on a mobile device you will need to open it in the Puffin Browser,
which will enable you to use Flash. Click on the link below to download Puffin:




After you are done designing your imaginary animals, transfer them to watercolor paper, add texture and color them using watercolor pencils, following the directions in the video below:


Invented animal rubric
1) Did you invent an original animal?
2)Did you draw it carefully? Did you use details?
3) Did you include textures to indicate fur, feathers, scales, wrinkled skin or spikes? 
4) Did you create an animal that you can cut out with a scissors without losing any details?
5) Did you transfer your animal to watercolor paper, outline it with rhythmic patterns, using both thin and thick lines, and color it with watercolor pencils?

Here are some tips and tricks for drawing your own imaginary tiny asteroids:




Below is my daughter's own tiny planet, created in 6th grade. 

She was told to draw a map showing how 
she went home from school and write a paragraph to govwith it, with step by step walking directions,
 written in Spanish. The Spanish  teacher was just expecting a simple drawing of a map but my daughter gessoed a ball, painted it with acrylic paint and hot glued her own sculptures 
of Crayola Model Magic buildings and model rail 
road trees (from a hobby store) to the surface.













Student Art Gallery





























1 comment:

  1. Thank you for sharing this interesting blog with us. I really want to have Printable Coloring Pages for my kids so, this vacation they have an extra activity. I decided to browse on the internet to look books and I saw your article. I wish you would post more new updates here. Keep sharing!

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