#1 Best Way to Create a Sea Turtles Drawing with Basic Shapes

Even the most elaborate and famous artworks can be broken down into a drawing with basic shapes. In fact, most art begins by drawing with basic shapes. Using the simplest geometric shapes, pictures of landscape objects, human figures, buildings, and even vehicles can be drawn. For one particular lesson, I had my students draw pictures of sea turtles.

Students of all ages benefit from using basic shapes for simple animal drawing activities. This lesson not only makes sea turtle drawing easy, it also teaches a way to make sea turtle painting easy too! Just look at these charming sea turtle drawings! 🐢✏️ (Click here for a turtles drawing games for art class activity on TpT.)

More Than Just Drawings of Turtles

This is always a hit with my students. I wanted to go beyond drawing sea turtles, so to extend the lesson, we viewed images of sea turtles and learned a little about their habitat. We also learned about what they eat, how they swim, and other science-y fun. Adding this simple twist gives students more conceptual and contextual knowledge about their sea turtle drawings. 

All students, regardless of age, find value in incorporating basic shapes into simple animal drawing exercises. This lesson not only simplifies sea turtle drawing, but also offers an approach to make sea turtle painting more accessible. Feast your eyes on these delightful sea turtle drawings! 🐢✏️ (For the how to draw instructions, check out the resource linked here.)

Sea Turtle Drawings with Basic Shapes

To begin, I showed images of sea turtles from different angles. Then, I taught the students how to look for and use basic shapes to help them draw. For drawings of turtles, they could see shapes like circles, ovals, diamonds, and squares. 

They created their sea turtles by drawing using basic shapes and traced their lines with a black permanent marker. Then, they added color using construction paper crayons. They also drew circles and other details in the background with the construction paper crayons. The students finished up with painting a wash of turquoise liquid watercolor and sprinkled salt for texture.

I created a no-prep version of this sea turtle lesson to share with you. It includes hand-drawn patterns and examples, along with literacy extension activities. I have found hand-drawn resources to work the best for students because it takes off the pressure of creating “perfect” art.

Lesson Extension

One year, I taught this lesson after visiting the Pensacola Museum of Art where Guy Harvey's works were on exhibit. I showed photos of the work that I'd taken. I let the classes choose which ocean animal to create. You will see the variations in the last photo. I'd like to blog more about how that lesson went later. However, I wanted to include the bulletin board photo of these so that you could see how stunning they are when hung in the hallway.

Several of the sea turtles in these photos were created by students with special needs. I will not tell you which ones. However, I think it is significant to point that out because the lesson works for all ability levels.

For the full sea turtles drawing - games for art class resource and how to draw instructions, click here.

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