My daughter received a Russian Nesting doll for her second birthday. The moment the toy was opened it was the object of desire for all my children. They each wanted a turn opening and closing the sequential dolls and I knew this energy needed to work its way into my art room. With a little help from Deep Space Sparkle I knew just the direction I would take students.
We started off by watching the above video. This clip does a great job at capturing the sounds and colors of Russia. I love how the dolls are dancing a traditional Russian dance, twisting, spinning and sliding back and forth around the stage. The students LOVED it!
For the project, we made three sized dolls - large, medium and small. We worked on making the dolls have similar features since they all live in the same family. We drew out the dolls using a yogurt cup as the anchor to the drawing. This circle acts as the face and allowed each student to succeed at drawing the remaining components in a proportional way. After the drawings were complete, students then traced their dolls with a black sharpie and added color using watercolor crayons. The final step was to add an abstract background where we focused on shape and color so that the dolls wouldn't get lost in the picture.
