ART VIII

Pop Art and Complementary Colors

During our last lesson on color, students learned about Andy Warhol and how he used complementary colors, those that are opposite one another on the color wheel and when used against each other, highlight one another, causing the colors to 'pop.' Then, after a brief discussion about the influence of Warhol's works on popular culture and a testing out of different pairs of colors, students were able to determine that the pairs that work best are red and green, yellow and purple, and blue and orange. They put their newfound knowledge to the test and created beautiful, vivid works of art!

Sketching out a design

One of the finished pieces

Testing out colors that complement one another

A finished creation

ART VII

After a brief hiatus because of my visit to NYC for my brother’s wedding, I’m back with another beautiful art lesson to show off. This week students continued to focus on color, refreshing their memories about the primary colors, secondary colors, and the monochromatic color scheme and adding in a new element that artists use to create dramatic compositions: the warm and cool color groups. Students used the knowledge they have gained about composition, line, and positive and negative space to play with the warm and cool color groups and reinforce their gaining sense of how colors work together. 

Check out the wonderful products of their experimentation!:

 

Beginning with line

 

First, we drew all sorts of lines all over the page in all different directions. Next, we chose an object to represent and drew it big in the center of the paper.  

Grouping our colors

Finished with the cools, now onto the warms!

Experimenting with color groups with the aid of the color wheel

Then, we sorted our colors into two groups, remembering that warm colors remind us of fire (reds, oranges, yellows and everything in between) and the cool colors remind us of the sea (blues, greens, and purples).
















Students remembered that there isn’t just one hue of each color and were able to group pink into an interesting category that skates along the border of warm and cool and settled on grouping it with the cool colors, and firmly placed aquamarine in with the cools as well. There was some debate about peach until one student proved that it is a monochrome of orange mixed with white. I was so impressed by the high level of art talk floating around the room by these now seasoned artists! 

We had a ball creating our compositions and realizing the power of grouping colors into warm and cool. Just look at how our artwork popped because of it!