Sara E. Thomas
Objectives:
Students will be able to mix secondary and tertiary colors from primary colors.
Students will begin to learn brush control and good craftsmanship with paint.
Material:
Acrylic paint, brushes of different sizes, palette paper, water jars, paper
Procedure:
1. I will test students' prior knowledge of color theory by asking them questions about the primary and secondary colors. How do you mix green? How do you mix yellow?
2. I will demonstrate how to set up the color wheel on the board, and have them do the same on their paper. We will start by making an equilateral triangle with a circle at each point. Each of those circles will hold a primary color.
3. Once students have finished that together we will draw an inverse equilateral triangle inside of that one, placing another circle directly in between each primary color, and connecting the secondary colors. I will stress the importance of this being a functional tool so they need to be sure that the correct secondary color is in between the two they used to mix it.
4. Lastly, students will draw smaller circles in between each primary and secondary and fill them with tertiary colors.
Once they have completed their color wheel we will talk about complementary colors. Complementary colors are colors across the color wheel from each other. The pairs of primary and secondary complementary colors are: red and green, yellow and purple and blue and orange. When complementary colors are painted next to each other they make each other stand out. When they are added to one another they dull each other, and eventually make brown.
Students will do two exercises to get them familiar with using complementary colors. The first will be a color theory exercise where they choose a primary color, and then paint four small boxes of that color, and surround each small box of color by other colors. They should see that the box surrounded by its complementary color should look different than the others.
The second are value scales out of each primary color. A value scale is a scale starting with the lightest tint of the color (the most white added) in equal jumps to the darkest dulling of the color (its complement added to make brown). Students will complete a value scale with seven different steps of each primary color. The primary color will go in the middle box of each scale. To the left of the primary color the student will add a little white, then a little more white, then a little more white, until the box on the end has the lightest tint in it. The boxes to the right of the primary color they will add a little more of its complement, dulling it a little more in each square until the last one is brown.
Once students have learned to dull and tint colors we will review how to add volume to a sphere, cylinder, square and cone. We will review light source, highlight and shadow and students will practice doing these with paint. This will get them used to mixing all of their value scale before hand and then blending the values together on the canvas to create a gradient (a gradual value change from light to dark). Once students have completed these exercises they will add tints and shades to their shapes on their canvas to make their shapes appear three--dimensional. Craftsmanship and brush control while painting will be very important.
