night at the wonka factory.

That was one of my first thoughts after viewing this piece by Chicago based illustrator and designer Joe Van Wetering. 

Joe has done a number of designs for Threadless clothing. I, in fact, bought one of his designs for my wife a couple years ago. I think he has an interesting color sensibility and I like the energy that comes across in his work.

Looking through Joe's website with my 3rd graders, we discovered that he creates movement in his designs in very simple yet effective ways. He often uses simple line patterns and line directions to do it. He also does it with the types of shapes he groups together in his designs. We also noticed how he uses tints of colors to add variety to his compositions and color palette.

The night time smog scene and the waterfall design are prime examples of all these elements. One of the 3rd grade standards is to be able to identify and create movement in art. I thought a project based on one of Joe's images would be an entertaining exploration of this element. 

1. students drew out their evening cityscape at the bottom. It must have 2 layers and use overlapping and value change to distinguish the 2 layers. They have been working with these concepts on a number of projects this year.

2. students draw out their smoke cloud/s that show motion through shape design. They start by drawing the main shape and then break it into smaller wave shapes inside. They may use any of the warm or cool colors for the smoke shapes. They must make 3 shapes tints of colors.

High success rate project and a minimal cleanup project for me at the end of their 4 week rotation that dealt a lot with mixed media and collage elements. It will be nice to have a clean floor on Monday.