Learning Objectives

  • Students will understand what a bestiary is
  • Students will learn how some animals came to be fantastical while based upon real life
  • Students will be able to use different watercolor techniques and watercolor pencils
  • Students will practice drawing from observation
  • Students will be able to write stories based upon their made up animals

    • Materials

    Watercolor paper scraps, watercolor paper sheets, watercolors, watercolor pencils, print outs of medieval bestiaries, animal reproductions, animal figurines, lined paper, gold and silver construction paper

    Vocabulary

    Bestiary, proportion, composition, shading

    Visuals

    Medieval Bestiaries, Illuminated Manuscripts

    Lesson

    This lesson introduces students to the creation of mythical beasts and stories.

    A warm up activity for this lesson is to play a game of telephone in order to demonstrate how the descriptions of animals were altered by word of mouth. Another one is to read aloud from a packet of Medieval Beasts in order to hear descriptions of these animals from Medieval times.

    Using watercolor pencils and toy animal figurines, students drew from observation by taking different body parts from different animals to create their own unique creatures. When they were finished with their animals, they wrote a mythical story to go along with their creature that would describe their animal

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