jamming with jeremy

Searching for local artist inspiration a little while ago, I came across the work of Jeremy Sicile-Kira. I soon discovered that Jeremy is autistic and that he is nonverbal. One of the ways he communicates with the world is through his painting. I love his bold, bright palette and his use of masking tape to create lines throughout his compositions.

I have since used his work as inspiration for painting experiments with a couple groups of students.

I have 2 class moderate/severe special education classes and I thought his world would lend itself so well to experiments with liquid media and color mixing. We broke the process down into 3 parts- coloring a sheet with crayon while trying to use the side of the crayon, then placing tape down and adding color with cake tempera, adding more tape and more cake tempera, and finally, more tape and liquid tempera. The cake tempera gave us transparent colors while the liquid temperas gave us more opaque colors. The first class is younger and required more hand over hand assistance with these steps. The second group is older and more independent and through the activity with less help.

At the end of each experiment, students helped each other add paint to large canvases that were already taped. Again, exploring color mixing. Earlier in the year, they created the first layers of color on these by driving vehicles through primary color paint to make secondary colors.

I've also introduced Jeremy's work to my first graders and when doing so, I have talked about how he is a wonder like Augie from "We're All Wonders', which the 1st grade team has read. With these experiments, students have followed the same steps, although the first layer of crayon is a bit more complex in shape and detail. With each step, we talk about creative choices- what parts of the image do they want to protect from the next layer of paint. We also go over proper care of each of the paint mediums and the paint brushes.

The activities have been a blast to do with each of the groups- there has been A LOT of excitement as the tape gets peeled off at the end of the activity.

chalking and grooving.

My first graders also got into the chalk pastel action last week. They experimented with them as an extension to their color mixing unit. The week before, I read them "In My Heart- A Book of Feelings" and they used primary color crayola color sticks to make secondary colors in their drawings. Very clean!

This project was obviously a lot more messy:) We started the lesson by briefly looking at the work of Norman Lewis, an African American painter whose styled evolved into abstract expressionism over the course of his artistic career. He was strongly inspired by jazz music. On the flip side of that inspiration, musicians have actually performed pieces inspired by the shapes, colors, and composition present in his work.

We noticed how he used large and small shapes, how he added white to colors to create tints, and how he used primary and secondary colors in his work. I discussed his love of jazz. Our 1st grade classrooms are located in close proximity to our music rooms, so we connected to their experience on campus. They hear the older kids play strings and horns from their classes and they hear the instrumental music particularly at recess time.

For each stage or layer of the drawing, we worked to a different piece of instrumental music and attempted to connect our marks to the music.

Students laid down the primary color background to a mellow Miles Davis piece called "So What". They smoothed some of those parts down while continuing to listen to it. They mixed some areas to create secondary colors while listening to a calm arrangement by the Benny Goodman Orchestra. Tints were mixed while listening to a faster tempo song from Horace Silver called "Blowing the Blues Away". They then got into the first portion of smaller marks and lines. They listened to a percussion heavy piece by the Incredible Bongo Band titled "Apache" that has been sampled heavily by hip hop artists over the years, most famously by Grandmaster Flash in the early 80s. When readying for this step, I encouraged them to think about the speed of the music, it's beat, and it's loudness. Some kids were more involved with dancing at first and I told them to think about how they could translate those moves into marks on their paper. The final piece of markmaking was in response to an instrumental piece by the Beastie Boys called "Pow".

I think the kids, by and large, loved this drawing and listening experiment. It was really cool to see how different kids responded to the music with color placement and mark making energy and arrangement.

messy mixing.

Last week, the 1st graders also dove back into school with a chalk pastel project. Nothing like getting dirty right after an extended break! Before starting, we reviewed their use of natural shapes and primary colors in previous projects. We then looked at some work of Gordon Hopkins for inspiration.

While looking at a few of his works, we identified shapes, patterns, primary colors, and secondary colors. I asked kids if they knew what colors were mixed together to mix the secondaries and I wrote these as math equations of the board for them to refer to while working later.

I introduced the kids to chalk pastels and showed them how to hold the chalk so that their drawing hand does not touch the paper as they work. We lightly drew our compositions with visual elements from Gordon's work. We drew a spikey plant, similar to agaves they may see out here, a branch with leaves that is like jade plants in San Diego, and a few flowers. We also added a couple line patterns to the background. With each step we rotated the paper. I asked students to think about where they wanted each element to go. Where did they think the best place for each was in the composition.

We then used each of the primary colors in a different spot in the composition. Students picked which natural element they wanted done in each color. After that, we added different primaries on top of those to make our secondaries. To fill the background patterns, students could use any color they wanted- this  included any of the other chalk pastels they had available. As the final step, we used a black oil pastel to make one of the main elements stand out more than the other parts. I emphasized making that outline bold and strong by pressing hard with the oil pastel.

mixing in spring:)

This week the kinders continued working with color and they got to mix primaries to make secondaries for the first time this year. I used an illustration by Adrienne Looman for this color exploration.

We spent a few minutes at the beginning of class identifying things the kids saw in the image- natural shapes, geometric shapes, and colors. I then talked about how you can take the primary colors and mix them together in different pairs to make new colors.

We drew out our composition lightly in pencil together. Near the end of this, I told students they could add elements to their drawing if they had big, empty spaces.

We started the coloring with yellow. I asked them to color 2 or 3 parts of each thing yellow, then they colored 1 or 2 parts red, followed by a part or 2 blue. We got mixing at that point. The kids got a kick out of seeing how the colors changed.

At the end of the lesson, I posted 3 sentences about color mixing that they could choose from for their exit sentence. We read them aloud together and they chose one to write.