Lessons
Interactive lessons — click through them on a Chromebook, or follow along on the projector.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.