10/29 - Color Theory Trees

Color theory is defined as: a practical guidance to color mixing and the visual effects of specific color combinations. There are also definitions of colors based on the color wheel: primary color, secondary color and tertiary color. 

For this project we will be creating a color wheel of primary and secondary colors.  We will start with the primary (red, yellow, blue) and mix them to get our secondary (orange, green, violet).  Students will paint six sections on their strip of paper.  These will be used for the "leaves" later on.

My palette of colors.

We will talk about, look at trees and practice drawing a realistic tree.  My drawing is not overly realistic because we need six main branches for this project.

Here is the mostly finished project.  The students' will have more leaves.  I left mine on the light side so they can see the tree.

10/22 - moonlight landscape

Autumn is my favorite time of the year!  I love how the trees come alive with color, all different variety of apples are available and fields of pumpkins color the landscape.  This week's project has a big Autumn full moon (did you see the moon over the weekend?) and a hill full of pumpkins.  We will talk about foreground, middle ground and background and how the size of our pumpkins will show depth in our work.  We will layer and blend oil pastels to round out our pumpkins and add a highlight on top where the moonlight (light source) is hitting.

We will look at a real pumpkin and practice drawing first - no basketball pumpkins!

Students will create three sizes of pumpkins (large, medium, small) on black paper. We will layer colors beginning with a light layer first and building up from there.  The pumpkins will be cut out and glued on the background (hill and full moon).  Lately, curved lines will be added to the pumpkins with black oil pastel.

10/15 - Romero Britto Style Pumpkins

I am a fan of pop art.  It is fun, bold, colorful and I think it has kid appeal.  Romero Britto (b 10/6/63) is a Brazilian born artist who resides in Miami, FL.  His style combines elements of cubism, pop art and graffiti.  Britto is influenced by Matisse and Picasso.  I read that his work "exudes warmth, optimism and love."  He is also a great humanitarian donating time, art and resources to many charitable organizations.

Today we will look at real pumpkins and do a practice sketch.  We will redraw a larger version on our good sheet of paper, making sure there are at least five sections on the final copy.

Students will be given orange, yellow and white paint to mix and create different shades of orange to paint their pumpkins.

We will paint each section, add some patterns, in the style of Britto, and add a background.

10/8 Georgia O'Keeffe Landscape

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was a modern, American painter best known for her large, close-up paintings of flowers and New Mexico landscapes. Before she fell in love with the dessert, she fell in love with a photographer.  They married and bought a summer house at Lake George, NY.  Here she painted the area around her.  Below is an image of "Lake George, Autumn" what we are basing today's project on.

Hmm, my phone/camera was not cooperating so the project is on its side.  We will be working with liquid tempera paints to create this pretty fall landscape based on O'Keeffe's work. Students will use tints to paint the sky. I will show how to "hop" the brush to create the fall trees in warm colors. We will discuss tree branches and how they "branch out" from the trunk and then paint them in when the leaves are dry.

Here is a section of the project going the correct way.