The first few weeks of school in art class have been magical! During the first week they painted paper with beautiful designs, textures, patterns, lines, dots, and fields of color using tempera paint on white tissue paper or drawing paper. Students learned about color mixing, for example: the primary colors (red, yellow, & blue) create the secondary colors (blue, green, & purple). Students also played around with mixing tints by adding white to colors to create soft hues like baby blue, bubblegum pink, mint green, and peach. Students loved the freedom to explore and experiment freely with various tools including paintbrushes, stamps, rollers, and scrapers. Second, they used these beautifully hand-painted papers to cut out shapes to create collages of flowers and bugs like the illustrations in Eric Carle’s books: “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and “The Tiny Seed.” Students learned that layering the paper creates interesting effects & rich textures. Lastly, students used oil pastels to draw on details like grass, dirt, leaves, sun, clouds, rain, and another smaller insect or worm, before signing their name at the bottom of their paper and painting the background with diluted watercolors. The results have been stunning!
