Kindergarten- Fall Trees

Kindergarteners are starting off the year learning about color.  After reading them a fun book called Color Dance, students learned about primary colors and warm and cool colors (secondary colors will come later, starting off simple for now!). For the first part of the lesson, students painted circular clouds  of warm Fall colored leaves for their tree. Once that was dry, I dropped a tiny blob of ink at the bottom of their paper and they blew the ink through a straw for the trunk and spread it out into branches. It helps to tilt the paper down so the ink can flow better, and we don't want purple faced kinders! For the second class, students used cool colors to paint the sky. 

This is a favorite lesson of mine because students have so much fun mixing colors, especially seeing the water turn into a delicious "pink lemonade" or purple "Gatorade". It's a magical process. Plus, they get to blow ink through a straw and that is always a hit. 

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. 

Third and Fourth Grade: Trees in Tints and Shades

Acrylic on paper

Kindergarten: Warhol Soup Cans

This was a color based project inspired by Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans. Each student brought in a Campbell's soup can and wrapped it with paper they painted themselves. They also came up with a fun, interesting flavor. Vanilla soup anyone?