Color Theory Lessons and The Color Wheel

The past several weeks have been focused on color theory and all the colors in the color wheel.  The children were not allowed to use orange, green and purple colored pencils, or water colors, they needed to mix the colors themselves.  I would say that most of my kids would answer the question "If I run out of Red paint, what do I do?" properly.  Do you know it?  Well, you can't mix it, you must go to the store and buy it. 
 Although it was a hard task not to dip the paintbrush in orange and just get on with it, I feel like the kids really immersed themselves in color mixing.  On top of the primary, secondary and tertiary colors, I also had a heavy focus on tints and shades of each color.  Not sure you know 100% what that means?...ask your kid. :-)  
So I have this secret password thing to enter my art classroom.  The password is the same for all grades and changes each week.  I've been pretty tough on them, they had to remember (and try to pronounce correctly) the word monochromatic.  Ha Ha.  But even my 1st graders pulled it off.  And I would guess to say that MOST of them actually know what it means too!  We still have one more project where we will utilize a monochromatic scheme using our tints and shades, and make something wonderful.  But until then, please enjoy these colorful photos of the making of the color wheel with only THREE colors.  [Red, Yellow, Blue] AKA Primary Colors. Of course, they used white and black too, for making their tints and shades.

1st through 3rd Grade used Colored Pencils for their mixing.

They got to choose whether they did a tint or a shade for each color on the wheel in the smaller box below.

4th and 5th used Water Colors

These are my 1ST GRADERS!  Look at that saturation with the colors! 

 I told them I didn't want to see any white, just perfect!

Art Portfolios and Art Journals

The past few weeks have gone by like a flash.  Seriously, the classes seem like they end as quickly as they begin.  I am enjoying every minute of it and really getting to know all the kids names, and unique personalities.  I think they think I'm funny, which is what I'm going for.  I should have been a kid comedian.  I love when I try to make something go over their heads, and there's one or two who catch it, and think I'm so funny.  That just tickles me.  Ok, on to art...

We finished up our Art Portfolios.  The children presented their uniqueness with sharpies, stencils, tapes of all fashions, along with stickers and a lot of imagination.  We will hold all our 2D works in them throughout the year.  

 

Self Portrait

Tearing and lining up duct tape to seal the sides of the Art Portfolio.

 

This is not misuse of duct tape.  Someone was trying to be funny.  It happens to be my child.  And in all honesty, the room got a lot quieter after this happened.

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We moved on to Art Journals for all of last week.  This is where the duct tape, scotch tape, fabric tape and washi tape really kicked in.  [Note to self-put tape on the supply list for NEXT year!]  I went shopping a lot for tape, I did a lot of begging for tape too.  Tape is fun.  The kids think it's fun too.  Just watching them try to cut it, tear it, share it and untwist it, mesmerized me, it really did.  There were lots of giggles and some serious down to business book creators.  We also had to figure out how to fashion an "art cash pocket" out of paper, tape or glue sticks.  Some of the creations that came my way really impressed me.  I said "wow" to myself a lot--in a good way.  I'm dealing with 200+ different brains thinking in different ways, someone is bound to wow me once in a while.  And that they did. 

Sometimes you need a buddy to help you position and rip the tape.

Lots of design choices

One pair of scissors for every kind of tape???  However the creativity flows--we just embrace it!

Someone likes art....and that makes me happy.

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Our sixth and seventh graders really took the Art Journals to a higher level.  We introduced Coptic Binding/Stitching and had them hand stitch their journals together.  The end result was fantastic.  Here is one student making a signature (group of paper) that will be bound later by a Coptic Stitch.

Completed Coptic Stitch Journals

So you can see that the creativity is flowing in the LP art room.  I hope the children are excited to come each week.  Perhaps they've even mentioned who my "babies" are.  There are eighteen of them in the classroom, that need to be looked after with great care.  I talk a lot about my "babies" and how special they are to me.  

Next up--Color Theory.  This is where the real fun begins!!  Stay Tuned...