Color Theory Leaf Paintings

I've been working on different ways for my 5th grade students to collaborate in the art room. We discuss how every child's work has value, and how all of us contributing to a larger creative effort can be a powerful thing. Since I am part time I also find that it helps to assure my presence in the school communities and to make our displays even more impressive. Gotta advocate for the arts! 

Quite a while ago I read about these fantastic color theory leaf paintings on a blog titled Art to the Moon & Back, by Linda Limbach. I thought it was a great way to make a color theory painting more interesting, to allow for choice in the painting, and to create a collaborative mural. Plan for several class periods to create these pieces.

For the first class, I took a walk around my neighborhood to see how many different kinds of leaves I could find, and brought some examples to share with my students. I also made a reference sheet to have available at each table. We talked about organic shapes, symmetry, serrated and smooth edges, and variety in color and size.

  Then each student drew a leaf shape in pencil on 12x16 paper. It could be a realistic shape like the ones we discussed, or they could create an original creation. The only rules were that it had to take up as much of the paper as possible, and that the stem of the leaf should e included, but drawn as a large shape to be able to paint inside of it. Also, if they were going to create a serrated edge, I suggested keeping it simple and stylized to be successful in cutting out their final painting at the end of the unit.

 

We then divided our leaves into 12 sections. Depending on the design, students either split the leaf down the center first, or did so without including the stem. So on the leaf above, there are six sections on the left, and five on the right, and the stem makes the twelfth. On the oak leaf below, a line was drawn down the center of the entire leaf, and six sections were made on each side. Then students reviewed the color wheel, and named each section along the outside in order, beginning at any point of the leaf they wished. The lines at this point are drawn in the biggest permanent markers you have on hand! And students can even redraw the lines thicker for the main outline, so they will have a generous area of black for the final trimming.

Inside each of the sections we then used a fine point Sharpie to create 4 more areas. There should be a variety of approaches to creating the four smaller sections. In the leaf above, I showed that the easiest way to divide up the stem is with an X. I also explained how the section with the ovals has only three, but the background area counts as a fourth section. Now that the color wheel is completely drawn, the goal is to fill each section of the leaf with the color, and a tint, shade, and tone of that color.

The area around the outside of the leaf can be messy, as you can see. This works for many reasons. First, their color wheel is labeled around the outside, so they don't forget or repeat a color. Their name, class, and table is listed at the top. This is great for pulling pieces from the drying rack and sorting them easily. I also find that many times I have the children write their names on the back of their projects, but when they are on the front I have a prompt for remembering each child's name, their artwork, and its progress. This makes it a great unit for the beginning of the year. And lastly, students can test a mixed color on the outer edge of the paper. Sometimes there is concern over whether a tint is light enough, or if a tone is different enough from the shade just painted. So testing the color on the outside is a great method for testing colors out before applying them inside the final piece.

Final touches are added by cleaning up any lines that were painted over by redrawing here and there with black Sharpie. Then at the very end, make sure students write their names on the back, and carefully cut out their painted leaf designs. Here are some of our finished pieces:

For our collaboration, I created a painted tree on bulletin board paper. It was about nine feet long! All of my students' leaves were added for a wonderful collaborative display. i have to say that displaying the paintings just as floating leaves along the hallway or bulletin board looks great too. I hope you get a chance to create some color theory leaf paintings in your art room. Enjoy.

Collaboration: Hearts and Hands Mural

A fellow art teacher on an art teachers Facebook group was my inspiration to create this hand emoji themed mural. (FELLOW TEACHER on Facebook! If you see my post, please reach out to me, I'd love to give you credit for this project!) I enjoy creating collaboration projects as first lessons of the year in the art room. The small size of each students contribution allows for choice. Every student feels successful, I get a chance to assess their skills, and it breaks the ice in the classroom as we all get to know each other. Not to mention we have a beautiful piece of art to hang in the hallway.

One of our finished murals.

I began by searching for a stock photo that I thought would make the best final mural image. Here's the one I chose below. I then printed it out, and placed it on a light box with graph paper over it to plot out the tiled grid. I drew the hand shapes in pencil, and sectioned off the image in red, giving each panel a letter designation. 

I made each square of the graph paper equal to a 3" tile that each of my students would contribute. The paper size for each panel was 18"x18", except for the right most panels, they were 18" x 24". The final size of the mural was 8' wide by 6 'tall.

Plotting out the design.

We discussed the elements of art and my students were given guidelines for their assignment. They had to create at least three tiles to add to the mural, with minimal white space, utilizing the elements of art, and their subject matter had to be appropriate for school display. We used colored Sharpies for our designs, and I provided half sheets of copy paper so they could color all the way to the edges of their tiles without marking up the tables too much.

Creating tile drawings.

As they worked on their tile designs I prepped paper panels, each labeled with a letter of the alphabet. Then I created numbered grids, X marks for spaces that needed tiles, and a corresponding panel beneath them. 

As the children began to finish their designs, I made several stations each with a panel, glue sponge, and pencil. They were allowed to glue their tiles anywhere that a square had an X marked across it. Wherever they glued their tile, they had to also write their name and class in the corresponding tile below (this helped me with grading, as their names on the back of their tiles got glued down). So in the example, if a student glued their tile to spot #15, they then needed to sign their name and class on the #15 in the smaller panel below. Oh, and see that half-filled diagonal square in the right column? To accommodate the finished image we needed some diagonal designs too. I saved them for extra credit/early finishers. No need to cut the tile in half, just design a half tile drawing, and glue down like a full one. The colored-in areas just needed to match up.

Students add their tiles to the mural.

It was fun to watch how they chose the places to add their tiles to the murals. Some wanted to spread them out by gluing at different stations, some wanted them all together, some chose favorite numbers and so on.

 

Mural details.

To assemble the mural, I graded their work and removed the lower panels for each piece (hold onto them if you plan to let the kids cut up the mural to retrieve their tiles after it has been exhibited). Then I just assembled in alphabetical order! I taped panels together on the back with masking tape, into vertical strips, and then hung them adjacent to each other to display the mural in full. It's easier to transport and to hang than fastening the entire mural together as one piece. I saved the final reveal for the kids too, so they tried to guess what kind of image our tiles would make each time we worked. Here is the finished piece we made at my second school.
 

The fact that this collaboration culminates with a positive message to share with the school community is the perfect ending to this unit. I hope you try out a tiled collaboration with your kids. Maybe you'll choose a different kind of image to make into a mural. I'd love to see, so share if you do!

Middle School Mural, Part Three

Our mural is complete! HURRAY! 

Here are a few suggestions/learning moments I would like to share for those of you with a yearning to mural, or to help your next mural go more smoothly.

We used Sax True Flow acrylics and they worked well. We mixed a little white into each color to give them better opacity. The lightest colors did need an additional coat— and go figure, I realized later that Sax makes a Blockout White, which probably would have been a better way to go! Live and learn. The kids used restaurant cups to carry their paint over to the mural. And I just snapped the lids on and saved them for the next week! Unless there was near nothing left in the cups, the paint stayed moist and usable throughout our five weeks of meeting to work on the mural.

 

Once we got rolling and past just filling in large areas of color, my students were so motivated that I became a little overwhelmed with many of them asking over and over and/or simultaneously "What do I do now? What's next?" I had about twelve students, for a 6 foot by six foot space. Not everyone could work at the same time, and sometimes with so many working, I could not look to see what needed to be done! So, at the end of each work day I would take a shot of the mural in progress, and before the next meeting, I would mark all of the areas that needed work with a post-it note. Voila! Students could pick an area, pull off a note, and get to work. I also had students washing brushes, filling paint cups, and mixing colors as we needed them. And lets not forget the emergency clean up crew! Damp washcloths at the ready just in case of spills, paint on clothing etc. 

 We had the printout of the image hanging nearby for reference as we worked. For circles and stripes I hung up sheets to practice on. Having a chance to try filling in these areas before heading to the mural gave the kids confidence, and helped their work to be its best. I still found that straight lines were tricky, barring masking every line with tape. So in smaller areas, we opted to make free-form lines, and dab dots. The kids could practice them on the practice sheets as well, and they still gave the look and feel of Britto's original work. They also painted the free-form scribble patterns free hand.

For the final stage of adding black outlines, I painted the outside borders for the kids to fill in, and painted some areas myself. Once you get so close to the finish, you don't want anything to go horribly wrong. And at this point, precision is key!  We managed all of the final touches with success.



This really was a great learning experience for the kids, as well as for me as a teacher, artist, and life-long learner. I also enjoyed the many students and staff who walked by and stopped to give encouragement, thank me for contributing to brightening up our hallways, and find out who I am! Being a part-time teacher who travels to two different schools, I don't always get to feel as much a part of each school's community as I would like. This was a wonderful opportunity to get to know everyone. And I'm glad my students will be able to walk by our mural and know they were part of it for their years at middle school. Great job young artists!

 To see the other stages of our Romero Britto mural, check out these previous posts...

Middle School Mural, Part One

Middle School Mural, Part Two

Middle School Mural, Part Two

Progress continues with my 5th grade Artists of the Week, as we create a new mural for our school. Here we are on Day Two, blocking in solid areas of color. 

  We are copying a masterwork of the contemporary artist Romero Britto.
He is a Brazilian-American and his work is part cubism, pop art and graffiti.
"Britto uses vibrant colors and bold patterns as a visual language of hope and happiness, reflecting his optimistic faith in the world around him." What better way to beautify
our school environment than to pay tribute to an artist with such a wonderful way
of looking at the world!

These kinds of projects are so wonderful and accomplish many goals for a school community, including beautification, school spirit, teamwork, and participating a large-scale community artwork.  

Even though students consider this a fun afternoon activity, the are learning how to cooperate, how to paint on an upright surface (not an easy task), and how to scale an image by using the grid method. They are also learning about breaking down an image into stages that help to recreate it in an order that makes sense: large broad flat areas of color, smaller patterns and details, and final outlines and accents.

Please check back for updates and pictures of the finished mural.
 

Middle School Mural, Part One

What happens when water fountains are replaced at your school, and you are left 

with a big gray wall when all is said and done? Well, sometimes you are very lucky 

and your principal thinks of you.

 You are given a blank canvas and the chance to work with some of your students 

on something special to make six square feet of space come to life!

You find just the right image to brighten things up, that will be appropriate for the school environment, give an opportunity for learning, and will be achievable for your students. You plan, sketch up a grid, and transfer your image onto the wall. 

And then you and your kids get to work! Oh, and you remember to bring a better camera to document the rest of the project! More to come.

There's a Dragon in the Garden

Towards the end of the summer I donated my time and expertise to creating a new bottle cap mural for a local elementary school. This past school year the students, staff, and families all participated in the building of a school garden and outdoor classroom.

The timing never seemed to work for me when they were designing the space, building garden beds, etc. but I love to garden and wanted to contribute. So I decided that I would create a bottle cap mural for the school garden. Since 2012 was the first year of the school garden project, the year of the dragon, and since the mascot of the elementary school is a dragon, I decided to create a mural with the theme “A Dragon in the Garden.” It sounds a bit like a wonderful art teacher blog I know of, but it's just coincidence. Hi Phyl!

These projects are so wonderful and accomplish many goals for a school community, including beautification and school spirit, a lesson in recycling (bottle caps can not be recycled, but can be re-used for this purpose), and participating a large-scale community artwork. The families and children who participated brought me great joy, and were such a help! The principal was impressed and plans to install the mural soon on one of the outside building walls of the garden. They may even put it on display at the Board of Ed offices before it is permanently placed. I hope it will make the garden an even more beautiful space, and that the kids can point and say "I helped make that!"

Here is the finished mural. It is 4'x8' and used over 1,900 bottle caps. 

Transferring the design. 

Literally, in the middle of sorting.

The painting begins.

Beginning to install the caps, working from the middle out.

Capping the dragon's wing.

A parent and student working with the screwdriver drill.

Adding the finishing touches.

Most Fascinating Blog Nomination

Voting begins this week at Accelerated Degree for some of the most fascinating art teacher blogs of the past year. I am fortunate enough to be included among the nominated for one of my posts featuring the bottle cap mural that students and I created last summer! It must be fate, because I just offered to create another mural this summer for our local elementary school.

Now the tricky part. To vote you must have a Google+ account.  If you have one, all you need to do is visit the link, and look for the second post down with the picture of a girl at an easel. The "My Adventures..." blog is listed in the comments. Add a +1 there, and your vote is cast. 

If you don't have an account, but are willing to join and cast a vote for little old me, visit Google and select the +Google tab along the bottom menu. Thanks for voting, and good luck to all of my fellow art teacher bloggers!

Our Bottle Cap Mural in Progress!

Well summer is here and my students have been donating bottle caps like crazy! Off we go on our first bottle cap adventure. You can see more photos on our Facebook page. More mural posts and progress to come...

The Bottle Cap Drive is On!

I've started a plastic bottle cap drive for my art studio! I'm taking the plunge and coordinating some mural projects with the kids for our spring and summer workshops. Then I hope to propose a mural project to donate to a local venue.

Does anyone have any learning experiences or advice on a smoothly run operation? Any construction troubles? I'd love to hear from you! Here's an inspirational link if you are not familiar with these amazing projects. Visit: http://www.artgrange.com/LittleBottlecap.html