Warm and Cool Colors "Imagination" Lesson

Hello, all! 

I promised some more lesson posts, and I'm starting with this one! I'm loving how these turned out. If you want to try this with your kids or students, keep reading!

SUPPLIES:

- tempera paints in a variety of colors

- something for the paint to go in - we used egg cartons

- multicultural construction paper (9 x 12 cut in half sheets)

- green paper

- Large (11 x 17) white paper and smaller (9 x 12) paper

- brushes, water cups

LESSON:

1.) Show an example that you've made of this pieces. Talk a little about conceptual illustration. Is this a picture that could really happen, or is someone using their imagination to create it? You could also show some surrealistic or conceptual illustration by other artists. Ask the kids what they think your piece is trying to "say". Why did you choose to have flowers growing out of your head? I got some interesting answers from my students: "It's about using your imagination", "Our minds are blooming", etc. They got it.

2.) Have a little talk about warm and cool colors...review them. They have a choice of having a warm background with cool flowers, or cool background with warm flowers - for contrast. Have them paint their background on the big sheet of white - just designs and patterns covering the whole paper. The smaller white sheet is to paint the flowers. They should also cover their smaller flower sheet in paint, since they will cut their flowers out of this. 

3.) They can then make stems and leaves out of the green paper, and cut out flower shapes out of their smaller painted paper. 

4.) We did a self-portrait lesson right before this lesson, so the kids already knew how to set up their guidelines for drawing their faces. They should choose their skin color out of a stack of the multicultural construction paper, and then draw a self-portrait on it. They can draw in pencil and trace in pen, and color in lips, hair and eye colors. 

5.) Glue everything together on the background paper! This whole process took us about 3, 45 minute sessions. And as always, some kids go through it super quickly, some very slowly, so plan other things for early finishers. But you knew that. Have fun!!