Optical Color Mixing With a Dollar Store Top

I love teaching art, but if I *had* to choose something else to teach, it would be science. Science and nature are just unlimited stimulation for a curious mind! Don't worry, I'm not changing my blog's focus! But the science of color kind of creeps in now and then in art and this time I decided to embrace it and surprise my students with a color theory lesson that was a bit, ahem, over the top (groan!)

When doing research on optical color mixing, I found a couple of neat mechanical devices used by scientists to test optical color mixing and immediately thought: TOPS! Could the simple tops I had on hand from the dollar store be used to make a version of Newton's Color Wheel (or Color Top) and teach the children about color mixing in art? Yep!

Pointillists such as George Seurat are frequently thought of when discussing optical color mixing, but many other artists use it too such as the Impressionists and modern artists such as Chuck Close and modern printing (such as in newspapers and magazines also use optical color mixing).

Here are some sites to get you started on your journey:

"Mixing in the Eye," From Drawing From Life by Fred Hatt
"Newton's Color Wheel," From The Department of Physics at Kenyon College
"Color Mixing Wheel-Sick Science," From Steve Spangler Science

I abolutely LOVE the article by Fred Hatt about color mixing in art! Talk about one-stop shopping in terms of info and images!

So, let's get started!

Optical Color Mixing With a Dollar Store Top

Supplies Needed:

• Top (ours are from the dollar store and were packed two tops per package--what a deal!)
• White card stock
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Tape, optionnal
• Sharpies in Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and black

Directions to prepare the tops:

1. Measure the diameter of the top. Ours were about 2 1/2." Create a series of circles that are the diameter of your top on the white card stock. 

2. Use the pencil and the ruler to divide up the circles into quarters, sixths, rings, etc. using the images below or from the links I've provided. It's good to do a few serious experiments first and then leave a few of the circles blank to create some wild tops using your imagination.

3. Color in the circles with various color combos, experimenting with the colors of the rainbow, or a the primaries, or just black and white. Use nice, bold colored markers and do a nice job coloring the sections in (no streaky coloring).

4. Cut out the colored circles and use the hole punch to make a circle in the center to fit over the "handle" of the top. You can secure the paper piece to your top with a rolled bit of tape, if desired.

5. Spin your top and observe what happens.

Some variations to try:

Use the primaries (Red/Yellow/Blue) to make
Secondary colors (Orange/Green/Purple) from the Color Wheel

Now try this one: divide the circle in sixths, color and spin.
What happens? How is this different than if you mixed
all of these colors of paint together?
(Spoiler alert: Pure White Light is created--
see below in the "How does this work?" section).

This experiment also works with value--try different combos
of white and black and see of you can get different tints and shades.

And now have some fun! Try your own color combinations
and see how they turn out! Which of your creations are your
favorites? Which creations surprised you?

How does this work?

When the wheel spins, your eye cannot keep up with the individual colors on the top, so the colors appear to blend. That is how you can create different shades of gray or secondary colors from the primaries. However, when you use the colors of the rainbow something interesting occurs (spoiler alert!). Instead of mixing together and forming black (that's what would happen if you mixed all those colors of paint together on your palette), a pale gray occurs (it is supposed to be white). Pure white light will be created if all of the colors in a rainbow are visually mixed together in perfect balance. Pure white light is a hard thing to create but your color wheel top with six colors will come very close.

Have fun with your experiments!

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!