Monday, September 26, 2011

eye of the tiger.

My second lesson with the 4th graders continued to focus on line in art. I also wanted them to see how easy it is to make movement in art through playing with the shape of their shapes.

We looked at the art of California based designer and illustrator Priscilla Wilson to get inspiration for this project. Priscilla does a ton of drawing and she relies on contour lines often in her work. She also balances her use of contour with a use of implied lines in areas. Her work is engaging due to the detailing present in it and her choice of subject matter. There is a cheerfulness to her images, and sometimes they are down
right silly, which is always good with the 4th grade crowd.



We noticed that she creates motion through the positioning of key shapes and through how she stretches them out to make it look like those shapes are traveling from one point to another. I talked about how a raindrop looks like it is moving to its shape. If a rain drop were still it would look like a sphere.


We continued to focus on complementary colors. Students could use more colors in their drawings as long as there was at least one pair of opposites. I also demonstrated how to make shapes look 3d by using different amounts of hand pressure. The lighter you press will make tints on white paper and shades on black paper. This change in value turns flat shapes into 3d looking ones.

Since I work with 4th grade classes 3 days a week, I chose to use different images by Priscilla for inspiration on each day. The same elements were addressed in each lesson, but the final images changed.
This kept things fresh for ol' Mr. Masse:)













1 comment:

  1. Hey DMasse,
    Wowza! Your 4th graders are very talented! I especially enjoyed the last house on stilts. It reminded me of Dali. Nice work-

    :)Pat

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