Color Theory T-Shirt Designs

To top off our unit on color theory we challenged our students creativity and knowledge of color schemes. Each student was tasked with the goal of designing 4 t-shirt designs that represent 4 different color schemes. 

As per usual, craftsmanship was of utmost focus for this project. It seems elementary to teach MS and HS students to color, but it pays off.

Here, Chloe uses monochromatic, complimentary, primary, and warm color schemes.

Marie implemented analogous, cool, secondary, and primary color schemes.

And Angelina used warm, monochromatic, cool, and complimentary color schemes.

As always, it was so fun to see everyone's personalities show through their designs and how they implemented the various color schemes.

Analogous Color Organic Pop-Art

Color is the element of art I could probably spend the most time on, because there are SO many color schemes to focus on! For our first project I will admit I went a little out of order. Generally one would start with Primary colors (Red, Yellow, and Blue) and then branch out from there, but I feel my students generally know how to mix colors, etc.  So, we jumped right onto analogous color schemes. I like to call these colors "next door neighbors." Analogous colors are those that blend into one another on the color wheel (as seen below).

For this project our primary objective was CRAFTSMANSHIP. It sounds silly at this age but I think it is SO important for students for be able to cut a smooth even line. For future presentations, scrapbooking, matting, framing, really... anything, craftsmanship is crucial because the presentation of an idea or item is everything. Drawing back upon our knowledge of organic shapes, our students designed a abstract, organic shape and color scheme, and then cut layers upon layers of paper getting a little larger each time with even borders. Then, they literally made their artwork POP! Using small squares of cardboard the students glued each layer raised off the surface of the next. All together they make for a very exciting art installation! 

 

Make sure to stop by the hall across from the office and check it out!

Colorful Kandinsky

To help us learn about the famous Russian abstract artist, Wassily Kandinsky, our students implemented bright colors, sharp lines, and various shapes! They followed close directions to create rythmic patterns, and excelled at it! Our younger grades embraced their inner artist to create vibrant shapes inspired by the artist's famous circle paintings.

Here, Jaramiah and Janeya focus hard to remember the color pattern we learned...

 

Alone they looked cool, but all together- magic.               

4th/5th grade: 

This was actually a 2-class lesson. The first class was spent focusing on creating the design and learning color theory with color mixing.  It was cool to see how the same 3 primary colors were used, but because of the different ratios the students came up with various shades and tertiary colors! The second class was spent finishing painting the colors and giving the painting a final bold black outline.

Again, seeing them individually is nice, but altogether is the best! I love my colorful classroom!

Candy Grid Paintings

Chances are if you stopped by the school anytime in the month of November, you saw these awesome paintings done by our middle and high schoolers!

I was surprised when I noticed that I forgot to post about it!

The grid method is one used by many professional artists to magnify or minimize images without warping the proportions.

For our first main project of the school year students selected a candy logo and using their sweet math skills magnified, duplicated, and painted the image.

Here are just a few of their amazing paintings!

Painting by Daniel S.

Painting by Michael S.

Painting by Annie F.

Painting by Ryan R.

Painting by Vincent B.

It will be hard to top this project in my opinion!

Color and Color Mixing!

Color theory is something I could spend weeks teaching and talking about, and as my favorite element of art the projects we could do are endless!

To start, we discussed the science behind  all the colors in the rainbow. We saw how pure light contains all of the colors and that when light passes through something reflective (like water) the light waves split at different frequencies which our eyes perceive as various colors.

Our K-1 class read a story entitled "Roy G Biv is Mad at Me Because I Love Pink."
It's a cute story that goes through every color in the rainbow describing its effects in art.

Then, our students created Roy G Biv portraits. It's funny how much the boys in the class took the "mad" factor from the book to heart!

This one is so fancy :) haha

I've noticed adding teeth is very important to this age group...

Then, we focused on primary colors: red, yellow and blue. With these three colors we can mix any color in the rainbow spectrum!

We read a book called "Mouse Paint" and learned all about the color combinations used to make secondary colors.

Together we used watercolors  to mix primary colors just like the mice in the book! 

In the 2nd and 3rd grade classes, clay was our medium of choice. We used Fimo clay, a clay that hardens when baked in the oven. With pre-portioned clay we mixed our primary colors to create a full rainbow.

I really dated myself with the 4th and 5th grade classes when I pulled out a troll doll and no one knew what it was! I told our students how when I was little I loved playing with the troll dolls with rainbow hair. Naturally, there needed the a lesson around that. This was one of my favorite lessons from my student teaching days!

Using only the colors red, yellow and blue, our talented students made their own rainbow trolls.

After all that, I'd say our color lessons proved to be a huge success, and our students are color mixing champions!

9-Square Quilt Squares

Something that I love about Art is that it is the perfect class to reiterate concepts learned in other subjects for better understanding and recollection. This is because art is A. EVERYWHERE and B. includes aspects of Science, Math, History, Language Arts, and the list goes on...

With our 2-3rd graders learning fractions, it was the perfect opportunity to illustrate the fact that math, like art, is everywhere! 

I started by sharing a story about how when I was little, I hated math. I thought I just wasn't good at it, so I did not like it! I loved drawing, however. The more I drew, and the better I became, the more I found I had to use math (whaaaaaat?!) So, I decided to take a break from drawing-because come on- there was math, and I hate math. With that, I tried my hand at cooking. I baked and experimented and measured.... and tried doubling recipes. As I'm sure you could guess, there came the math. Ew. Time to move on. Finally, I decided to learn to sew. I took up some quilting, and to no surprise there was A LOT of math. With this I realized it was time to come to terms with my rocky relationship with math. Eventually, I learned that math, like art, reading, writing, and sports, is not something you are simply good or bad at-it's something that you have to practice and improve at! 

With this story I showed some quilts I made that included a 9-square quilt pattern, and how different arrangements of shapes created different patterns.

As a class we discussed how to identify a numerator and denominator, and counted the fractions of various colors in sample quilt squares. We also identified the symmetry of quilt squares, and that if you cut the square down the center, it is a reflection on each side. We took 3 squares, and cut them in half. Then, we counted them identifying how even though were now 6 parts or shapes, they make up 3 whole squares. After selecting their colors, the students created their own!

After cutting and gluing their "quilt" squares, our students counted and recorded in their Art folders how much of their squares were each color.

Artist and mathematicians; they are children of many talents.

After putting all the squares together we had a beautiful class quilt!

And suddenly, the classroom felt like home :)