CHARCOAL DRAWINGS

This is a fun project to do and I've had great success with it with grades 9, 10 and 11.  Have the students fold a large piece of newsprint into eights.  In each square they will be doing a drawing (in pencil) in response to a word that you give them but they will only have 1 minute to complete it.  The goal is to draw the first thing that comes to their mind.   Some of the words that you give them will be concrete and the other words will be more abstract and therefore a little more challenging for them to respond to quickly.  Here are the eight words that I used - fire, explosion, city, outer space, flight, growth, death, and animal.  The next step requires them to develop a composition using five of the words/drawings.  While the words that you used cannot change, their original drawn response can be further developed or even changed when they are developing their final charcoal composition.  Some years I have the kids work with a combination of conte and charcoal.