Chalk Cupcakes with values

3rd Grade Chalk Cupcakes

This lesson was inspired by Wayne Thiebaud’s art. I tie it in to lessons on values and shading. This has been posted before but, I’ve tweaked it a bit the more times I’ve taught it to make it easier to teach.

Materials: black card stock, pencil & eraser, Crayola color chalk, white chalk

We draw our cupcake and a plate.

The wonderful thing about the Crayola Chalk sets is, most of the colors have a light and dark shade. We start from the cherry and work our way down. They get to choose a set for the frosting, start with the darker and add light on one side of the frosting and drips.

For the cake part they can use brown or white. One side they press hard with the chalk to make a brighter value and the other side softly coloring in, so the black paper is showing through to make a darker shade.

They get to choose another set for the wrapper, start with the darker and add light on one side
Then another color for the plate. At that point we use the black chalk and add in a shadow from the cupcake on the plate and details on the cupcakes.

I have them use their eraser to clean up any smudges and I spray with aqua net hair spray as a fixative.