Drawing a Giraffe, A Step-by-step Method

This is the 12 inch  model the children used as a guide. I probably bought this at a zoo gift shop. First we talked about the basic shapes we saw...circles, ovals, rectangles, triangles. We also decided whether to use the paper vertically or horizontally. We drew an imaginary giraffe on our paper with our finger to get an idea of how big we wanted to make our giraffe. And then we started drawing. Remember you can click on the pictures to get a bigger image.

Here is a diagram of the shapes we used. Notice that most of the triangle shapes are only approximately triangles. The points are blunt or chopped off. I thought it might be more useful to anyone doing their own drawing to see the order in which we drew so below are the steps in the order in which we did them. The students used a crayon or marker in a color that would blend well into the finished drawing. Most chose yellow or orange.

To see the results of this step-by-step method, see the August 15, entry. All 17 children's drawings are in it. You will notice that some of them came up with ingenious ways of adjusting their drawings when they did not like the lines they had drawn in crayon or marker.