Water Safety Poster Contest

All my elementary and middle school students are participating this year in California's annual Water Safety Poster contest (see details here). After a lesson on some important things to know about water safety, here are the results! I hope at least one of my students gets their artwork in the annual calendar.

Middle School:

The Joys of Painting Fruit

In a color scale exercise, my middle and high school students learned the value of using a color's complement (red/green, blue/orange, yellow/purple) instead of black to create different values and neutralize a color. To practice this, I gave each one of them a handout with photos of 3 fruits, each with a good light source and shadow:

I instructed them to divide their paper into 4 sections, and paint a fruit in each one. They would start with using just black and white (and mixing to make gray) for the first one, choosing any fruit they would like. The next three squares they would use each of the fruit one time, and the following paints in any arrangement they liked on the paper. 1) blue and orange (and white), 2) red and green (and white), and 3) yellow and purple (and white). Here are some of the best ones. I am really impressed with how well they did!

High School student Ashley

High School student Beam

Color Theory for Everyone!

So I've started teaching my middle and high school students about color and paint. Their first task was to paint in a color wheel with tints and shades. They have a full range of colors in their art packets but I only allowed them to use red, yellow, blue, black, and white for their color wheels.

Once they figured out how to mix the paint, I wanted them to create an artwork utilizing warm and cool color palettes. I looked around online for ideas and I loved this one posted by Arte a Scuola (thank you!!). I had them choose 5 items from a bunch of containers I set up in the classroom and they could arrange them any way they wanted to on the page.

The next step was to break up the page with lines going through the objects. Each shape would need to be next to a different color than itself. They could choose warm colors for the background and cool colors for the objects, or vice versa. After they finished painting they went over their lines with black sharpie.

Even with such specific rules I still think there is beautiful diversity in the results:

High School student Marcus - this one is exceptional!!

High School student Katie