Art with Found Objects

During Continuous Learning I wanted to make sure that all of the students had options on my choice boards that would work for them, even if they didn't have art supplies at home. I came up with several options that could be done using found objects and they were so much fun. I will definitely use some of these "no art supply" prompts if we have to teach online again in the future.

Color Wheel Challenge

This is a challenge that blew up when we started online! Students collect a variety of objects (it's a good idea to give a suggested minimum number ob objects like 15) in the primary and secondary colors and "artfully arrange" them into a color wheel. Search #colorwheelchallenge to find a ton of good examples online!

My example made with the help of my 6 year old who said it was "SO MUCH FUN!"

Found Object Text

Students could creatively arrange objects to form letters spelling out their name, initials, or a meaningful word. The most successful works used a theme or objects that represented the student.

Found Object Faces

I had several students make faces but somehow the pictures didn't all make it to the blog post. Oh well! I showed them Hanoch Piven's work for inspiration and the students could use whatever objects they chose.

Laundry Art

I saw laundry art inspired by artist Demont Pinder shared in the OnlineArt Teachers K-12 facebook group and there are so many possibilities! Pinder makes portraits but you could do landscapes, art history recreations, or anything! I made a version of the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait using a blanket, laundry, a pair of shoes, and a couple of necklaces. This falls into the category of art that actually works better from home! No student takers, but I will reintroduce this in the future.

Collaborative Color Wheel

I wanted to start off the year with some low pressure collaborative activities in my high school classes. One of the activities was a refresher or introduction to the color wheel. I went over the basic primary and secondary colors and told them that intermediate colors go in between. 

Students working on organizing colors on the collaborative color wheel.

I asked the students to cut swatches of color from magazines to organize onto a color wheel. I had a big circle cut out of mat board for the base which was donated last year but you could use cardboard, poster board, or any big piece of paper.
After the students had cut some swatches to start with we talked about organizing colors. I suggested they put the "true" colors in the middle of each wedge and the colors veering toward intermediates closer to the other combining color. The students decided to put the lighter values in the middle and the shades toward the outside.

Finished color wheel.

Positive take-aways were students analyzing the colors and starting to understand the variety that is out there beyond basic colors. Hopefully when we get to our painting boot camp next month and mix colors they will remember and be inspired. Plus, we now have a big, custom color wheel for reference! 

The students also had time to start some smaller value scales, which are pretty fun. I'm looking forward to getting them put up in the classroom.

Color Theory and Painting Center Photos

The Blick challenge on the smARTteacher this month is to share photos of your classroom. I posted pictures of my painting center and they shared the color theory image on Facebook. Pretty soon after, there was a comment asking "Am I crazy? Why is yellow on the cool color example? And why is violet on the warm color example?"

Fair question. I just said that I was taught that purple and yellow could be warm and/or cool since they are split down the middle. Were any of you taught the same way I was? None of the other commenters act like they've ever heard of that.

I don't think any of my classes in university even talked about color theory. So I just go off of what I learned in high school. I think that a lot of color theory could come down to different perceptions. We learn in art that there is sometimes more than one right answer. Could this be another example? I said that my art teacher also taught that BROWN is a shade of ORANGE, therefore brown and blue would be complementary colors. A lot of art teachers can't agree on brown's complement, either.

If we learned anything from #thedress, it should be that people can have different perceptions of color. 

 Even primary colors can look different. Does blue ever look warm or red ever look cool, no. But I have seen some yellows that tend toward the warm side and some look cool. I love talking about colors- so interesting to me!

Here are the other painting center photos I shared on the smARTteacher:

How did you learn to classify purple and yellow? Am I the only one who was taught the either or thing?

Swirly Color Wheels

My student teacher wanted to do a color mixing lesson with Kindergarten. She had found an activity where kids mixed paint on plates by squishing it around inside plastic bags and as we talked about the logistics, this is what we came up with. Each student had a disposable plate with a little squirt of each of the primary colors on it. Miss Bennett talked to the students about how to use their special tool of the day- one index finger! The students followed along as she demonstrated pulling a little bit of two colors to mix in between to create a secondary color. After the three secondary colors were created, the students placed a circle of white paper on top and swirled it. (I inherited a ton of pre cut circles- I don't know what they are from but it was nice to use some of them!)

We kept all the plates and plan to use them as scales to form a dragon in the hallway for our East Asian studies.

Here are all the swirly color wheels displayed in the hallway around the giant collaborative color wheel in the center. The week before the swirly color wheel lesson, each of our 6 Kindergarten classes was assigned a primary or secondary color. The students cut 2-3 pictures or swatches out of a magazine for their class color and practiced glue stick skills to attach them to a large color wheel.

5th Grade True Color Self Portraits

Have you ever taken a True Color personality quiz?  They are pretty interesting.  You can end up being categorized as a blue, yellow, orange, or green.  Here are my summaries of the colors, much shorter (if you believe I am capable of a short description!) than the long descriptions that were listed at the end of the quiz I gave.

Blues seek harmony in relationships and are sensitive, intuitive, and creative.
Yellows are all about responsibility- they have a strong sense of right and wrong and want everybody to do their part.
Oranges are all about energy (the students who can't sit still and the class clowns), they like action and attention.
Greens are independent, like logic and facts, are curious, and innovative.

I had the students take a True Color quiz on the first day to find out which color they would be using in their monochromatic self portraits.  I wasn't thinking about it at first but this does incorporate math when the students have to add up lots of numbers to get their results.  I had several students that thought they tied but when I double checked the math, I think I only had about 3 of 110-ish students that really did tie.  I told those students they could either pick the color that they thought seemed most like them or use both.

Just like in the 6th grade self portraits, we talked about facial proportion and shading, just with tints and shades of one color instead of all.  I did let students use a tiny bit of bordering colors on the color wheel to mix in, as long as the main color appeared to be their result.

This project went over very well.  Although I did have a 5th grade boy in tears and one on the verge out of frustration at one point (that was a rough day, apparently) the students all seemed to be really proud of their projects and I was happy with the results.

Wax Resist Color Wheels

 This project was done with my third grade students.  I had already talked to my students about different kinds of lines and after studying organic and geometric shapes, I decided to do a color wheel project in wax resist so that the students could apply what they know about lines and shapes while learning color theory.  I showed the students how to split their 9x12 inch paper into six sections and said that the division could either be random or more symmetrical.

Of course I prefer the more random one. :)  I wish I would have remembered to teach the students "asymmetrical".  Don't know what I was thinking!  I'll have to point that out.

Artsonia exhibit: http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?exhibit=253341