The 2nd graders are continuing their study of warm and cool colors this week. We are using a collage by San Francisco based artist and designer, Rex Ray. (Who sadly passed away in February). Rex made some amazing images in his career. Some are very detailed and layered and some, like the focus piece, are simpler, but still visually engaging. I wanted them to see that they could use warm and cools in an abstract piece of art and still create contrast and interest.
Before starting the lesson, we reviewed the warms and cools and how they applied them in their bridge drawings inspired by Tadahiro Uesugi's concept art from Big Hero 6. I then shared Rex's piece and we identified the colors in that and also identified shapes and lines as well.
Students started by drawing a vertical line from top top bottom, splitting the paper into bigger and smaller sides. They then added one zig zag line across one of the sides. From that line, students added lines that went up or down from the line's corners. They used either warm or cool oil pastels to fill in about half of the shapes they made.
On the empty side, students used the opposite temperature to make a big, bold line from top to bottom. The type of line was up to them.
Then we switched over to watercolors and used the opposite colors of the oil pastel parts to fill in the rest of their compositions.
Once they were done painting, students wrote complete sentences that identified the warm and cool colors and they also reflected on both pieces from this rotation to decide which one they were more successful with. They were supposed to support their response with a "because" statement.
You should also check out the project that Laura over at Painted Paper did with her kiddos that was inspired on Rex's work. She works more truly with the collage aspect of much of his work:)
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