Blick Lesson Plans: hundreds of free, original ideas for Art Education!

At Blick, we love those "light bulb" moments when an idea inspires and the creative juices start to flow. Geared for a wide variety of age and skill levels, we offer hundreds of Lesson Plans designed to meet the National Standards for Visual Art Education and bring the value of creativity to any teaching experience. All original. All free. Help yourself!

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Lesson Plan
Grade Level
Metallic Shadow Book
NEW! Metallic Shadow Book
Abstractly cut paper is folded into a freestanding accordion book, creating shadows and light patterns on the surrounding environment
Color Block Portrait Reveal
Take blind contour drawing to a fun new level with invisible drawing media. Students will use a Sakura Cray-Pas Color Extender oil pastel to draw a contour portrait of a classmate. The line will be nearly invisible, but leave a mark in oil which serves as a resist. Students then apply color, in the form of bleeding tissue paper misted with water, to magically reveal the subject! The process is so fun it will be hard to stop at just one!
Narrative Collage
Choose from a personal photo bank, then rebuild an image using paper, glue, and paint, telling a visual story about their chosen subject matter. Portions of the collage, such as faces and figures, may be printed in black and white on paper, cut out, and painted with opaque watercolor.
Shape Language
In this lesson, students will learn how to break down a shape to create a vibrant painting in the style of Hannah Webb. Richeson Hardboard Flat Panels provide the perfect surface for Liquitex Basics Acrylics, resulting in a flat, smooth finish.
Grisaille Vessels
Grisaille is an effective way to teach the importance of mastering tone and only requires the use of two colors: white and black! A beginning painter’s arrangement of found and repurposed vessels is the subject for this lesson. Classroom-friendly Safflower Oil is all that is needed for color changes and clean up—no harsh solvents necessary!
9, 10, 11, 12
Artfully Altered Fabric Design
Breathe new life into shirts, jeans, and more using common drawing materials (that you probably already have). Fabric medium is a clear acrylic fluid that can help make many drawing and painting supplies more permanent and washable on fabric.
Geometric Himmeli Sculpture
In this lesson, traditional Swedish ornaments serve as an educational bridge to learning about platonic solids and more complicated geometric shapes.
Hero Figures
Heroes can be characterized by many admirable traits. Pay tribute to everyday community heroes with this simple wire and wood figure sculpture. A fun and thoughtful way to study human form in 3 dimensions.
What the River Sees
If we take the time to think about what a river sees on its journey, then we can be better friends and neighbors to it. As a collaborative piece, this lesson challenges students to create sections of a real or imagined river that can be joined together to make a linear, flowing storyline. From the river's beginnings in mountains, springs, or creeks to the place where it meets a larger body of water—the delta and wetlands.
3 - 8
Screen Printed Band Posters
The American Rock Poster is a genre of graphic design that follows its own drummer. Using a few shared images, a class can learn to screen print a poster about a concert from their own imagination. Speedball Speed Screens expose in one minute without chemicals, processing, or screen coating.
See Me 3-D
In this lesson, students will use Blick Studio Pastels on toned paper to create a three-dimensional effect portrait. When viewed on its own, the piece will look strikingly radical in color. When viewed through 3-D glasses made from poster board and colored acetate, the image will pop forward with vibrancy!
Write a Room
Words are power. Like art, they allow an artist to express the internal, communicating thoughts and emotions. In this lesson, students will create, with words, a drawing of a place that holds significance to them. Students will reflect on why this place is special, focusing on emotive and physically descriptive words.
Paper Bag Pocket Journal
When is an ordinary lunch sack not so ordinary? When it is transformed into a "flip-around" kraft-paper sketchbook/journal with built-in pockets for collecting and storing samples, papers and notes.
1-8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Kindness Coins
One small artwork can make a world of difference! Created to be shared, these "coins" can be made by anyone, regardless of age or skill level. Air dry clay forms a hard, circular base that be decorated with paintings, drawings, craft supplies, stamps or collage. As a way to say "thank you" or "good job", these little tokens can be a random gift of kindess left for someone to discover or a way to offer encouragement.
Mola Study in Felt
Create an interpretation of a unique artistic tradition, inspired by Mola designs of the Guna women of Panama. Ornate designs are created by stacking sheets of felt together, then cutting through the layers to reveal the colors and patterns below.
Color Paste Color Wheel
"Color paste" is a mixture of baking soda and acrylic paint that can be shaped with the safe blade of a painting knife and other tools, to. Students sculpt the color paste into peaks and valleys, creating patterns and intriguing textures while experimenting with mixing colors and learning how they relate to one another on a color wheel.
5-12, 12, 10, 11, 9, 5, 6, 8, 7
Reverse Dry Point
Dry point is a type of intaglio printmaking that involves scratching a design into a surface with a sharply pointed tool, then coating it with ink. Rather than using black ink on white paper as artists have for centuries, modern materials allow students to use opaque inks on black paper to produce a look that is both classical and contemporary at the same time.
9-12, 12, 10, 11, 9
WonderFoam Collagraph Prints
"WonderFoam is familiar to almost everyone who has ever presented a craft project to children — but, if you'd like to move beyond the ""foamies"" to a real art technique, incorporate WonderFoam into printmaking! “Collagraph” is a process in which materials are arranged collage-style on a rigid surface, coated with tempera paint and then transferred to paper. Students learn to make repeating patterns with shapes."
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, K, Special Education
Chime In with Nature
With a little bit of sculpture wire, canvas, and plaster it’s easy to create a masterful chime that sounds as beautiful as it looks. Students will learn to play with balance and counterbalance to create a kinetic sculpture that functions as an aesthetically pleasing chime. You won’t believe your eyes…or ears!
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Luminous Black Glue Prints
Decalcomania is a transfer technique used by some early 20th century surrealist painters to acheive spontaneous and uncontrolled art-making. This process presses black glue between two sides of a sheet of paper to create textures resembling tree branches, feathery foliage or frost patterns. Enhanced with metallic watercolor, these prints create moody, luminous landscapes.
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3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 11, 6, 7, 8, 9
Craft Stick Kinetics
Using notched, wooden sticks, students create a structure that moves on joined pivot points known as fulcrums. Much like a pantagraph or scissor mechanism, it can collapse or expand. Shapes and images on top of the structure move to make playful kinetic art.
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The Conceptual Art Game
A coloring game inspired by postmodern artist Sol LeWitt. LeWitt produced approximately 1,350 “Wall Drawings,” but rarely painted one himself. He provided the concept, then collaborated with others to actually produce the work. In this simple game, students receive the exact same set of instructions and materials, but execute them according to their own interpretations.
10, 11, 12, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Reimagine plastic bottles and cups as textural, painted containers perfect for plants and flowers. New, updated content!
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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, K
Kintsugi Eggshells
The Japanese tradition of “Kintsugi” is the repairing broken pottery with liquid gold. The value and beauty of the piece is enhanced because of the breakage. In this project, simple eggshells become exquisite, one-of-a-kind pieces of Kintsugi-inspired art.
1, 10, 11, 12, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, K, Special Education
No-Blender Pulp Painting
Featured with updated content! This project is a simple, tidy way to create the look of pulp painting without the mess of a blender or even the use of adhesive. Non-bleeding tissue paper is combined with water and agitated (torn) so that the paper fibers separate and make a rough pulp. Pressing the paper onto an absorbent (canvas) surface causes the fibers to re-bond with one another and, when dry, form a thicker, stronger paper.
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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, K, Special Education