Thursday, September 26, 2019

Fall Leaves : Warm and Cool

It's fall! (almost!)

We had a ton of fun this class working on a fall leaf project that incorporated the idea of warm and cool colors in art. We began by brainstorming what colors felt warm and cool to us. The kids were quite adept at this and even managed to articulate that there were some clear "middle" colors (green and purple) that could be seen as either warm or cool. Pretty neat!

Then we did a quick exercise to help the kids conceptualize an easy way to draw leaves and began our project. The kids each drew 5 (or more) fall leaves on watercolor paper. Then we painted. The kids were encouraged to use warm colors for the leaves (reds, oranges, yellows, pinks, browns, warm greens) and cool colors for the fall sky (blues, purples, grays).

As you can see from the final pieces, some children really resonated with that plan and kept with it through out the class. Others began with the warms and cools and then follow their own inspiration to finalize their pieces. Both approaches are completely valid and supported. I do encourage the kids to follow instructions initially so that they can benefit from the intended lesson, but once they have accomplished that, I want them feel free to follow their intuition where it goes! It was an energetic and lovely class!












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