Magical Fauve Landscapes

Every year I teach my students about color theory and the color wheel. This year, we're focusing on Modern Art, so I thought a perfect color-theory tie in would be learning about the Fauves. The Fauves (or Wild Beasts) are a bunch of radical artists that created some bright and beautiful pieces of artwork that didn't quite match up with the colors of reality.

I know these landscapes are pretty basic, but read the post to find out why...

I have always loved the work of the Fauves! When I was in college, I used to take this great book called "Fauve Landscape," by Judi Freeman out of my school library. The paintings just made me happy and after I renewed the book at least three times, I decided I needed to own it! I pulled the book off the shelf for this project, and it was full of inspiration for the kiddos.

I began my lesson by having the children fill in a basic color wheel. My standard 6-color color wheel worksheet allows the children to learn about primary, secondary, complementary, warm and cool colors. There was a bit of grumbling about doing the worksheet (some of my students had done this before), but understanding the color wheel is really important for this project to be a success.

Then we looked at examples of works by the Fauves (and artists that are sometimes classified as Fauvists). We had a discussion about the paintings (the colors that were used and how they make us feel, why the artists might have chosen to use the colors they did, etc.).

Then we moved on to the main project. This project was one I saved pre-Pinterest. It is from the book "Art is Fundamental," by Eileen Prince and I always thought my students would enjoy it. In short, students create a simple landscape scene using complementary colors for the objects in the scene. Prince suggests doing the lesson as a draw-along, so that's why all of our pictures look alike. This is a great project because it only needs one piece of paper, a pencil and markers. Having the color wheel on hand really helps them get the idea of complementary colors. By the end of the lesson, they were pros!

Once they are done coloring their scene with nice, solid color, students stare at the completed image for about 30 seconds and then quickly look at the white surface. If done correctly, they will see an afterimage of the scene with the colors appearing properly. It took some of the students a couple of tries to see the afterimage, but most of them were able to see it.

This project didn't impress some of my students as much as I thought it would, but I think I'll keep it in the curriculum because it is a great lesson on color theory and some really cool artists. I also think it is a great lesson to teach children about creating art "in your own way."

The white space on the lower portion is the "white field"
the children look at to see the afterimage.

Nice, solid colors are key to this project.

This project is like a "art vocab ninja"!
The children don't even realize they are learning so much
about color, landscapes, and Modern art.

Complementary Color Crazy Quilts

This amazing "quilt" was done by some of the students in my home school art class. This past summer, I picked up a book called, "Using Color in Your Art!" by Sandi Henry. I LOVE her books--they are always full of wonderful, kid-friendly projects! One of the projects she calls, "Dancing Stripes," is really a  lesson in complementary colors and color mixing. It reminded me of a crazy quilt square so I thought my home school students would enjoy making these and then we could group them together at the final art show for an amazing art piece.

I began by showing my students some books I have on quilting (both traditional and "story quilts"). I also had a beautiful poster of crazy quilts that was perfect to show them. We then created the pieces using acrylic paints on canvas boards. One of the parents had donated three sets of acrylics to the class, so I was able to introduce "real" paint and canvases to the children. The children enjoyed mixing primary colors to achieve secondary colors and then mixing the complementary colors and watching an array of earth tones and neutrals appear.

I think the final pieces came out great and it allowed me to teach the children how to use acrylics  as well as color mixing and brush techniques, but I think that next time I may structure the class a little differently. Here are my tips:

• If the children you are teaching are young, use tempera paints instead of acrylics. Color mixing can use A LOT of paint when kids are doing it. Ours were donated and grown-ups are in charge of dispensing paint in my classroom, so we could monitor it a bit.
• Begin with a color wheel. I teach 2nd-5th graders in my class. The older kids had a good grasp of the color wheel, but the younger ones weren't as sure. Have the children do a color wheel before or along side their canvas. 
• Sandi Henry suggests breaking the canvas into four sections: 1 for each primary color and one for black and white. I'd only stick to the primaries. My younger students got confused dividing up the canvas into so many sections.
• Maybe work in some "hands-on" color mixing. I thought that next time I may break the students into groups and have them mix secondaries in plastic bags and then squirt the resulting color onto a palette for the group to use. It might pace the class better and the older students could help the younger ones. Plus, everyone loves squishing paint in a zip top bag!
• Have better definitions of color terms as well as examples where artists have used complementary colors in their work. I want the students to understand WHY color mixing and color theory is important.
• I may use different sized canvases next time. I had wanted to display these as a "quilt" all linked together. One idea I saw online for displaying artwork like this (that would have been perfect) was duct-taping zip-top bags together at the seams to create a quilt. Each baggie forms a reusable "pocket" for a child's artwork allowing the teacher to display the pieces together as a unit and change them out when s/he likes. HOWEVER, the 9x12" canvases I used won't fit in standard-size baggies. Maybe 8x10" canvases would work (gallon size freezer bags are roughly 10x10"). SIGH. 

I will certainly do this project again, but I'm going to try some tweaking to make the process easier and hopefully more understandable to the children. Ah...live and learn!