Delta Charter Art Studio

Make something today.

Lessons you can click through, techniques you can practice, and a gallery of what this class has made.

Module 3 · Colored Pencil · Tool

Which pencil should I burnish with?

Pick the colors in your project and get the right burnishing pencil for each one.

Open the Burnisher Picker

Lessons

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Draft

Module 5 · Paint · 25 min

Acrylic Painting Basics

Why acrylic dries so fast (try the drying clock), which brush makes which mark, and how to mix any color from red, yellow, blue, white, and black. Then practice six strokes in the brush lab, learn the set-up and clean-up routine, and print a stroke sampler to paint for real.

Draft

Module 1 · Origins · 12 min

The First Paintings

A four-stop interactive walk before the day's project: make your guess, what we actually know (ochre, charcoal, chalk, binders), a timeline from Blombos Cave to today, then a quiz and a one-line cave-animal sketch.

Draft

Module 2 · Elements of Art · 20 min

Cave Art & the 7 Elements

Watch one cave bison come together one element at a time: line, shape, color, value, form, texture, and space. Find out why cave artists leaned so heavily on line, place their four pigments on the color wheel, then paint your own cave wall.

Draft

Module 3 · Colored Pencil · 15 min

Burnishing: Making Pencil Look Like Paint

Six stops: guess why colored pencil looks grainy, learn the paper's tooth, use a paper simulator (light layers vs. pressing hard first vs. burnishing), spot the mistake, make a 3-box practice strip, then pick the right burnishing pencil for each color in your piece.

Draft

Module 3 · Colored Pencil · Tool · 5 min

Burnisher Picker

Students tap the colors they're using in their project and get the pencil to burnish each one with — plus a backup, warnings for darks (no white!), and a list of pencils to grab before they start.

Draft

Module 4 · Color · 20 min

The Color Wheel

Every color from three pencils. Students mix a 12-color wheel by layering red, yellow, and blue, explore complementary, analogous, and warm/cool palettes, learn to darken with complements instead of black, then build the wheel for real.