Magazine drawings

What to do with all of those donated magazines?! Need a project for a substitute?
Here you go!

First, I have one student stand in the front of the group. The rest of the class closes their eyes, then opens their eyes and focuses on one thing about that classmate (shoes, hair, shirt, etc.) I tell them that while we're all looking at the same thing, we each are attracted to something different.

For the project, I have students make a ~1" square viewfinder with an index card and find a magazine. Then, they go through looking for PART of a picture that they find interesting. It could be a person, thing, part of a thing, etc. The viewfinder helps them focus on just part of an image so they don't become overwhelmed. After that, they draw!

IMPORTANT: I remind my students that their picture is going to look different than the magazine because the magazine is usually a photograph and is printed and theirs is hand-drawn. I often get "But mine is bad" or "Mine doesn't look like the picture." I tell them that if we wanted it to look exactly like the magazine image, we'd just take a photocopy.:) I tell them I want to see what they focus on and how they can get that across in their drawings!
It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be yours!