Collaborative Creatures

I've done this collaborative project for three years now and it always seems to be a really fun one.  I have a discussion with the students about collaboration and how artists use teamwork and collaboration to make interesting and amazing works of art.  I show a bunch of photos of the artwork of Brian Christopher and Jimmy apRoberts, two gentlemen whose site I stumbled on to a few years ago.  The kids love their paintings and it makes a great segue into our new project. 

I prep enough 12"x18" white papers for the whole class by marking the papers on their edges with little black marks about 3" from the top and bottom.  These marks will be used to make sure that when students begin drawing their monsters, the top of their back and the bottom of their belly will all line up with each others.  The students choose either head, body, or tail from picking a paper out of a hat.  I tell them that they have the option to work together with their table to create and color a creature that they plan and match, or they can choose to work alone so that when we finally put them together at the end of the project, it is a complete surprise as to what it looks like.  We used oil pastels to color in creatures and I let the kids spray paint a dark and gloomy background so that their brightly colored monsters would stand out.  We did this in preparation for Halloween and after all the students were done we took about 1/2 hour to mix and match them on the wall in front of the room and the kids loved showing off their strange and freaky creatures.