Rhythm and Movement: Alma Thomas

Over the summer I participated in the Contemporary Contemporaries art ed conference put together by Polly Blair and I learned about artist Alma Thomas! Polly shared a lesson she taught with some of her elementary students and I thought it could actually be tweaked to work for my graphic design students to focus on creating rhythm and movement in a composition. It also helped newbies understand the differences between watercolor and tempera paint.

Here is one of Thomas's paintings. She called her dabs of paint "color pats"

On the left is my painting made during the conference and on the right are my notes.

Students choose either warm or cool colors and paint the background in watercolor to start their paintings.

The next day, students chose the opposite color scheme and created movement using brush strokes.

Here's a great video I found that explains the difference between pattern and rhythm!