3rd grade Robot Paintings

Third graders read the book "Robot Zot" by Jon Scieszka. We looked carefully at the pictures and talked about Robot Zot. What makes him look like a robot? The answer was details--little bolts, antennae, switches and texture. He looked metallic. We noticed a white shiny highlight and some shading. We also talked about why people build robots, mostly to do jobs humans don't want to do. After drawing our own unique robot. We painted them one solid color. We then discussed adding a light source in our art, so it looks like there is light shining on our robot. On the same side as the light, we painted our white highlight. On the side opposite the light source, we painted a shadow by mixing our robot paint color with a bit of black paint. We will add backgrounds next week. I found the idea for this project here: http://www.johnpost.us/Teaching%20Links/Painting%20Lessons/robot-paintings/robot-paintings.html