Create Animal Silhouettes and Patterns

What You Need:

• Black paper 8.5" x 11"
• Pencil
• White watercolor paper 8.5" x 11"
• Scissors
• Glue Stick
• Colored pencils or Oil pastels

What You Do:

1. Begin by discussing with your child the definitions: texture, pattern and silhouette. A pattern is a repeating shape. Good examples are stripes on a zebra or spots on a leopard. Texture is what the fur or skin on an animal feels like. A giraffe looks fuzzy but the hair also looks kind of stiff, or a squid's suckers look bumpy and kind of slimy too. A silhouette is the outline of anything that is filled in with a solid color.
2. Ask your child to choose her favorite animal and investigate any textures or patterns it has on it's body. She can also discuss specific shapes on its body that makes it recognizable in a silhouette form.
3. Have her draw the outline of the animal's body with a pencil on black paper. Encourage her to draw it as large as possible.
4. She can cut out the silhouette of the animal from the black paper and put it aside.
5. Have her lightly sketch the pattern of her animal's skin or fur repeated across the entire page of the white paper.
6. Using colored pencils or oil pastels, she can fill in the colors of the pattern. As she does this, also help her consider what the texture might feel like and how she can convey that in pencil or pastel. Fuzzy fur may be short, soft strokes. Spiky texture may require long, jagged specific strokes.
7. When her background is complete, she can glue her animal silhouette directly on top of the pattern using a glue stick. 
8. Frame your wild beast and put it on display for all to visit!

Fun Fact: Before photography was invented, it was very popular for people to hire artists to create silhouettes of their profiles. They would precisely cut them from black paper and mount them on white paper.