Beanie Babies?

Remember Beanie Babies? Once a collector's hopeful investment, their value has taken a nose dive right along with the value of the houses they clutter. I cleaned out a basement closet last week, filled a couple of bags and carted them off to school. (Don't tell my daughter, or teenage son, for that matter!) Don't have kids? Didn't join the beanie baby craze? No problem, pick them up at garage sales for about a quarter; fill a garbage bag with them at that price.

Why? Well, they are still incredibly cute, even my 8th grade boys loved this project, but more to the art point, they make great still-life material. They generally provide simple lines for the beginning artist to render and they display a variety of textures from their glossy eyes to their fuzzy fur. Teach contour line, form versus shape, shadow and highlights, and even color value. The drawings shown here were done with artist's dry pastel on plain old 11x18 construction paper.

Furthermore, the ability to pose these chubby critters, provides an excellent teaching opportunity to show students how to draw, for instance, the slumpy, little puppy, they SEE with their eyes, rather than the image of DOG which they hold in their mind.