Artist Study: Wassily Kandinksy

More color theory. This time....Kandinsky! In this lesson we first looked at Kandinsky's famous concentric circles painting Farbstudie Quadrate circa 1913.

I started the lesson by projecting the image on the board. I asked the students who they thought made this painting. They responded "Gina's class," "my mom," and "you!" They were excited to learn that this was a famous painting that -- like the work Josef Albers that we had just looked at the week before -- studied how color looks different when placed next to other colors. Learners then started their own creations.

We started with a small circle in the center and then adding circles around that in pastel.

Learners painted in the circles with any color they chose, making sure to think about warm and cool colors.

Materials: watercolor paper cut in squares, watercolor paints, crayon or pastel

Artist Study: Josef Albers

As we continued our study of color we looked at the art work of Josef Albers. There is a wonderful children's book called An Eye for Color about Albers. It not only gives a short bio of Albers life but also nicely explains color theory in a clear and concise fashion.

After reading the book we looked at how colors can appear different when juxtaposed against different colors. A good example of this is putting a red square on top of a white piece of paper and on top of an purple piece of paper.

After reading the book and playing around with layering different squares on top of each other, we made our own Josef Albers artwork by gluing squares together.

Materials: pre-cut construction paper squares of various colors, glue sticks, An Eye for Color book

Artist Study: Rothko

As part of our study of color, we spent a session learning about Mark Rothko. First we read Dr. Seuss's book My Many Colored Days in which we talked about how certain colors can make you feel certain ways. We brainstormed a list of emotions for the major colors. (Yellow =  sunny, warm, bright, happy, glad; Blue = cold, sad, cool, icy) Then we looked at some reproductions of Rothko's work in Jacob Bael-Teshuva's book Rothko. Then it was on to creating our own color studies in the artist's style. We really focused on how we were feeling today and how different colors looked when juxtaposed against each other. 

Materials: pastels, black construction paper cut in rectangles, a few reproductions of Rothko's work

Artist Study: Claude Monet

For this artist study we looked at the waterlilies of Claude Monet. Few artists have more children's books written about them, to name a few:

A Picnic With Monet
Linnea in Monet's Garden
The Magical Garden of Claude Monet
Monet's Impressions
Monet Paints A Day
And even a pop-up book: A Walk in Monet's Garden

But perhaps my favorite is the lyrical The Blue Butterfly by Bijoux Le Tord which really captures the vision of the popular Impressionist.

After looking at examples of his paintings we made watercolor and tissue paper waterlily compositions.

I liked them so much I used one as the background for this blog :)

Materials: pre-cut tissue paper squares in pastel colors, thick paper (doesn't have to be watercolor paper but thick enough that it won't rip when painted on), glue sticks, pastels or crayons in blues, greens, whites, and grays. 

Family Portraits

We recently started a unit on family. We started the lesson by reading the book How Artists See Families. We compared how artists such as Cassatt, Sargent, Van Gogh and Homer interpreted families.  

Then learners created drawings of their families in thin sharpie. Next we used liquid watercolor to paint on top of the portraits. 

Materials: sharpies, watercolor paper, watercolor (I used liquid watercolor to give it a more abstract feel)

Multimedia Self Portraits

 At the beginning of the year we made these multimedia self portraits. We started by making an abstract watercolor. Then I photographed each child as if they were shouting something out. Next class session they filled out interview forms asking them their favorite activities, something they dislike, what they'd like to be when they grow up, etc... I think the final results really captured who each child is.

 

Materials: a photo of each child yelling, watercolors, watercolor paper

Color Wheel

The other day we created color wheels with colored clay. (I used Model Magic by Crayola.) I gave each learner blank color wheels and a small blob of clay in each of the three primary colors. 

We then mixed the colors to fill the remaining 9 spaces of the color wheel. Lastly they learned how to flatten, roll and pinch the clay and made their own clay sculptures.

Materials: clay in the three primary colors (I used Model Magic by Crayola), color wheel sheets

Texture!

We started our study of texture by going around the circle passing brown paper bags containing items of different textures. I used a pine cone, cotton balls and some sand paper. Then we did crayon rubbings of various textures. I both brought in items (bubble wrap, the netting that fruit comes in, etc...) and we did rubbings of things around the room (the bumpy concrete outside the classroom, the grainy plastic of their chairs, etc...)


We also read this great texture book:

Jane Brocket's Cover Concepts Spiky, Slimy, Smooth: What is Texture

Then we put it all together and made these "texture sandwiches". I did these on mat board donated by my local frame shop and used various materials such as:

• bubble wrap
• various papers
• yarns
• tissue
• cardboard (corrugated)
• shredded paper
• doilies
• foam
• fabrics
• pasta

 It was fun for the learners to name all the layers when they were finished: "A fluffy ham, holey cheese and crinkly lettuce sandwich."

The study of texture in art is a great tie-in to using "describing words" in their writing. At the end of our texture study we brainstormed a list of all the different texture describing words we could come up with.

Materials: mat board, various textured materials (see list above), glue (note: you might need a hot glue gun to attach some of the heavier materials)