Christine A. Elmore
In this section I plan to begin by addressing some pressing questions that many of my students will be asking, "What do painters do?", "How do they begin?", "How do they choose their subjects and the colors they will use?", "When do they know that they are finished?" I recently discovered a charming picture book that answers these questions and more. It is entitled Lunchtime for a Purple Snake by Harriet Ziefert and effectively teaches children about color and composition through a story. In this story Jessica visits her grandpa's art studio and together they create a painting. After spending some time experimenting with colors, they are now ready to begin a painting, and her grandpa warns: "Don't start right away. Take time to choose your colors. Try to make the paint sing" (12).
I plan to limit our study of the elements of art to two: line and color. Rob Court has written a series of books on the basic elements of art for children. Loopi the Fantastic Line leads the reader on an exploration of how such elements as line and color are used by artists. At the same time that he is introducing young readers to the particular art concept, he uses specific works of art as examples.
Line
Through the use of Court's books on line and color, I will introduce my students to such concepts as the types of straight lines (horizontal, vertical, angled, diagonal and their variations (dotted, dashed, squiggly, thick, thin) that artists use. We will also look at curved lines and outlines and how lines can be used to make interesting designs. Joy Evans and Tanya Skelton include a fun art activity in their book Teaching Art to Children on curves and angles. After folding a 9"x12" piece of white construction paper into eight sections, the student uses crayons to make separate designs in each section, using scalloped, curly, looped, wavy and zigzag lines.
This section of the unit presents the opportune time to show the class more of Andy Warhol's artwork. To show how lines are often used by the artist to show texture (like the whispy quality of a feather or the softness of a cat's fur), I will have my students view two artworks: "Two Seated Kittens," Pen on Paper, 1954 and "Sam," illustration from 25 cats named Sam, 1954. Lines can also create the impression of movement as exemplified in Warhol's painting of Martha Graham in motion entitled "The Kick." In addition, my students will view two of his silkscreen pieces taken from the Endangered Species collection, one of the "African Elephant" (1983) and one of the "Bald Eagle" (1983). Line is also used to great effect by the artist to create fine detail as shown in Warhol's portraits of shoes--one being a drawing entitled "Judy Garland," 1956.
Color
To begin our exploration of the element of color, my students will experiment with color mixing. Sue Stocks, in her book for children entitled Painting suggests using tempera paints of red, blue and yellow, the primary colors, to create many shades (8-9). On white construction paper the student begins by painting a yellow square at the top of his color column. He proceeds in a downward fashion creating smaller squares by adding increasing amounts of red to the yellow until the last square is nearly all red. He then proceeds in the same manner creating two more columns, in one adding blue to red and in the other adding yellow to blue. Once this is done, she suggests having the student point to a shade and name an object that has that color (e.g., tomato red).
A second art activity involves pattern painting using the primary colors. This activity is described in Sandy Henry's Using Color in Your Art (11-13). The student begins by folding a 9" x 12" piece of white construction paper into eight rectangles. Using tempera paint, he begins with the first color, painting a line or shape in the same place in each rectangle. Then he uses the other two colors, one at a time, making a different mark in an identical way and placed on each of the sections, thus creating a pattern. This activity has the added value of showing the repetitions of an image that Warhol is so famous for. Alison Cole describes Warhol's rationale for using this style in her book, Eyewitness Art: Color. "If one thing is good, argued Warhol with the un-canny down-home logic of the surplus market shopper of middle America, aren't a hundred of them ever better?" (58).
To explore how secondary colors are made, I will add another medium to our experimentation--string. Sandi Henry describes this string activity in her aforementioned book on pages 22-23. The student folds a piece of 6" x 9" white construction paper in half. He opens it back up and carefully arranges two pieces of string that have been dipped in tempera paint, one in blue and the other in yellow, on one side of the paper. The string ends need to be hanging off the paper's edge. After refolding the paper and applying pressure with one hand, the student pulls the two strings, one at a time, from between the folded paper. Upon opening the paper, he will see two identical drawings on each side and a secondary color of green created. He can then proceed in the same way with new paper using yellow and red and then red and blue. These paintings will be reminiscent of Warhol's Rorschach acrylic paintings because of their symmetry.
Color and Feelings
Color can be used to express your feelings. Warm colors like red, orange and yellow can be used to express anger or excitement while cool colors like blue, green gray and violet can express calmness and joy. I plan to use Dr. Seuss's book entitled My Many Colored Days to show my students this powerful dynamic (see Lesson Plan 2).
One way to see the effect that color can have on one's feelings is by painting color washes. Elizabeth Waters and Annie Harris describe this activity in their book, Painting: A Young Artist's Guide (20). The student begins by wetting small sheets of watercolor paper. Then he mixes a range of colors in tones of watercolor paints, creating color washes. Next, he uses a large brush to effectively sweep two of these washes across the paper all the way to the edges. The colors will blend together, forming interesting blurry images. These paintings are then hung for students to view and to explore what varying emotions they evoke.
To further explore this interesting dynamic between color and feelings, I plan to have my students view some paintings done by the Abstract Expressionist Franz Kline, who used large, broad, angular strokes and bold colors usually black on white (sometimes white on black) but also sometimes color in his artwork. Copies of some of his paintings can be found in the book by Irving Sandler entitled Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism.
One of the distinctive techniques that Warhol and other Pop artists used in their artwork involved divorcing color from its traditional contexts. We see this exemplified in his "Two Colored Cows," 1980, where Warhol used acrylic and silverprint on canvas. Random divisions of a cow's head repeated four times are colored in pinks, blue, orange and yellow against a black background. According to Jan Greenberg and Sandra Johnson in their book entitled The American Eye: Eleven Artists of the Twentieth Century, Warhol's view of "the modern way to make art was to follow the path of American Industry--mass production, the repetition of the same image over and over again" (92). The unusual and bright colors of flowers in his silkscreen on canvas work entitled "Flowers," 1964, shows the playful way in which he so often used color to great effect.