Creating Castles

Gr 5 Up—Artist Peggy Flores provides step-by-step instructions for creating castles through drawing, painting, and clay work and using construction paper, cardboard, and paper rolls in this process-driven video. She covers a bit of history pertaining to the importance and construction of castles. Unfamiliar vocabulary words are spelled onscreen and defined verbally. Flores shows how to begin a castle drawing using cutout paper templates and briefly touches on using perspective to give the illusion of distance. Different methods employed to add texture and color to make the projects more realistic are also explored. Watercolor, pencil, marker, ink, and clay techniques are demonstrated. Three-dimensional techniques are also shown using cardboard and bamboo sticks. A fun project for art classes.—Charli Osborne, Oxford Public Library, Oxford, MI