Saturday, September 14, 2013

Fall Color Theory

I love art! I am always so sad that we usually only DO art and hardly ever get to LEARN art. So this year I made a point to start the year with color theory.

We began very simple with primary colors and secondary colors. We read some great books that tell about the different kinds of colors.



We also watched a couple of YouTube clips as well.



This next one is my personal favorite. We watch and sing along  to it about three times a week :)



But, I admit I have a soft spot for OK GO... I mean, have you seen their treadmill music video for Here It Goes Again? Look it up. It's awesome!

Anyway...

We just finished learning about color mixing this last week and with some inspiration from here and here, I came up with our Color Mixing Fall Basket.

The students were given plates with the three primary colors. They also had fruit patterns (two apples and a pumpkin) and two paintbrushes!


First we washed the pumpkin in yellow paint. Then we dipped, just the tip of our paint brushes into the red and did a second wash over the pumpkin! And like MAGIC it became orange!

You should have heard all of the OOHHS and AAHHS! First graders are amazing :)


After we painted our apples, we switched brushes and began work on our leaves. We started with another wash of yellow and then dipped our brush into the blue and did a wash over, one last time.

Color mixing by doing a wash is MUCH, MUCH easier than having them mix the colors on their plate.


When all of the paint was dry, we cut out our pieces,  assembled them into our baskets and added some detail with a black crayon (basket lines, leaf detail, pumpkin lines). I also had them curl a green pipe cleaner for the pumpkin vine and tie a bow of twine, that were hot glued on during lunch!

Our finished baskets! Boo... cell phone pic :( But you get the idea!
I can't wait till next week when we learn about warm /cool colors and monochromatic colors!