Formal Elements Tonal Skull Drawing – Key Stage 3 and 4

This resource is designed to highlight some of the key Formal Elements of art while creating a step-by-step tonal drawing of a skull. This activity can be used for Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 and is designed to engage students in ‘looking and seeing’ and in consciously using the Formal Elements. Included is the learning objective, a definition of tone, all task instructions, a starter tone bar, a step-by-step main task – the skull drawing, and finally an extension task which includes some exploration of different pencil shading techniques.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE: To create a skull drawing using varied TONAL shading to demonstrate FORM

This resource is two PDF files; one with a ghost outline template to support the less able/less confident students, and one without for the more able/gifted and talented students. This sheet is suitable for integration within a scheme, one-off lesson, and/or cover a session and takes approximately two lessons to complete if being produced to a high standard. I usually print this resource on A3 cartridge paper and my students work directly onto the sheet, but this can be printed A4 also if desired.

I have created many other drawing sheets of varying subject matters, that you may wish to look at in my shop.