Eighth grade: Exploring Color

I don't remember how I came upon Leslie DeRose's  Etsy site, but her cropped bicycle paintings reminded me of a portfolio requirement when I applied to RISD undergrad. I think we had to draw a bicycle in any composition of our choice with pencil and it had to meet certain dimensions. It was a huge drawing and I definitely struggled drawing those spokes, but anyway! I digress. This year, I have a unique privilege to tutor one middle school student and she said she wanted to expand her knowledge of color. We looked at Leslie's paintings as a jumping off point to explore with tints and shades. She first printed out a photo of a whole bicycle, used a viewfinder to find an interesting composition, and sketched it on her final paper. As you can see when she was ready to paint, she made a value chart for the blue negative space. For the positive space, which is the bicycle, she painted it in the complementary color for blue- orange.