In this lesson, I get the students to take an object—in this case, a bird—and repeat variations of the subject in different sizes. The older ones will understand that they've also created some optical distance between the largest and smallest bird.
The first part of the assignment is simple. Draw some birds (they can look at references or use their imagination). Make a big one at the bottom of the page. It can be so big that part of it is cropped off, if they want. Then draw a small bird at the top of the page. I ask them to think about how they want those two birds to line up, because they will be filling in the rest of the paper with birds of various sizes, and we will be connecting those birds with tree branches.
Depending on this class, the birds can go in order from biggest at the bottom to smallest at the top, or the only rule might be to fill the page with about half-a-dozen different sized birds.
After the birds are drawn, I ask them to draw tree branches to connect them. They can make a trunk somewhere—or part of a trunk, cropped—if they want. The challenge is to get them to understand that it will make more sense for the biggest branches to go with the biggest birds and the smallest with the smallest.
A couple samples, done by children. I like how the student on the right added a flying bird. Both students vary the direction the birds face. I am struck, also, by how the students change the direction of their pencil marks to follow the branches.
