let's skate!

After doing the Charles Demuth project with 3rd graders, I thought the students would enjoy doing something a little more contemporary. Hello skateboard designs.

I introduced the students to the work of designer Don Pendleton. He has been designing work for the skate industry since 1998. He has a unique abstract style that varies depending on the project that he is working on. He relies heavily on contour lines to define the shapes and objects in his designs. Even though his designs are abstract, he still creates some depth by using tints of colors, overlapping shapes, and changing sizes of shapes from big to small.

After I introduced Don and his work and told the classes that they would be designing their own decks, there were loud cheers from many of the students in each of the classes.

I focused on one of his recent deck designs for the student project. When students looked at the design I had them identify the different ways he created depth- overlapping and size change in the shapes. We also discussed his use of complementary colors and by using these you can make parts of a design pop out from others.

When I showed them an example of what we would be doing I revisited the use of dark, medium, and light color values at add to the creation of foreground, middleground, and background. I also pointed out how the contour lines got thinner and thinner in each of those layers.

So, all told, students were going to create space in their abstract designs by doing 4 things-
    -overlapping
    -big, medium, and small sizes
    -dark, medium, and light color values
    -thick, medium, and thin contour lines

They had a compositional structure to follow, but the look of their characters was up to them, as long as they were abstract in style.

The lesson took a session and a half. I introduced Don's work and students create their cut paper decks during the second half of the class that was used to finish the Demuth project. THe drawing design was completed during that second meeting, after reviewing the key elements required in their designs.

1. cut and glue paper deck and white shape for deck design
2. draw outlines of characters using basic geometric shapes
3. draw features for each of the characters
4. trace contour lines of each character with marker color of deck, going from thick to thin lines
5. with colored pencils, add the complementary color of the deck to shapes in each layer of design, going from dark to light in the layers
6. add other colors to the characters in each layer, but still going from dark to light
7. add a pattern at the bottom in the construction color portion of the deck with construction paper crayons, using the complementary color of the deck. the pattern should be based on a shape that is in the design

The students really enjoyed this project and they are very excited to get their skateboards back so they can take them home and show them off. A number of students wanted to make real ones out of wood.

Maybe we need to write a grant for a wood shop.

charlie 5.

Figure 5 in Gold is one of Charles Demuth's most famous paintings. It may not appear to be so, but it is actually a portrait of one of his friends, the poet William Carlos Williams. Obviously not a physical likeness, it is based on imagery that is from one of his poems called The Great Figure. 

I decided to use this painting as inspiration for the 3rd grade classes first project with me this year. They had spent the first 4 weeks of the year with one of our other art teachers, Ms. Pothier and with her they focused on creating different values and making 3d space by making things smaller and smaller. They applied these concepts to projects while examining the work of Van Gogh, so I thought it would be interesting for them to apply these concepts to something that was very different visually. That way they can see that 3d space can be created both in work that is more realistic and in work that is more abstract.

We discussed what was happening visually in Demuth's painting as well as where he got the idea for this  "portrait". Before I told them how it actually was a portrait, I had students offer their own interpretations of the painting. Students in each class came up with some pretty good ideas based on very little information provided to them.

I emphasized his use of contour lines to define the edges of shapes and his repetition of the number while making them smaller and smaller to create some depth in the image.

I deviated from Demuth's color palette and introduced them to warm and cool colors in nature and art, so that students could use them to make certain parts of their image stand out against other parts.

When I showed them an example that I did, we also discussed how to turn a flat shape into something more 3d. By pressing hard and then more softly and softly, you can turn a circle into a sphere. While doing so with color, you make tints of the color because it mixes with the white of the paper. They had practiced shading like this with graphite in Ms. Pothier's class so they were familiar with the idea.

Before starting on their own versions, I emphasized to the students that they must have a reason for the number they were going to draw, just as Demuth did. It could be how old they are, how many people are in their family, their favorite number, etc.

1. choose a number and a reason for that number

2. I demonstrated how to make numbers 0 through 9 visually interesting as block or bubble numbers with a little flair

3. practice the number a few ways

4. draw it 3 times  going from big, medium, to small

4. add 5 circles. one has to go off the paper and one has to be overlapped by a number

5. add 7 lines to break up the background and negative space

6. trace all lines with a black marker and erase pencil lines

7. add marker color to numbers- choose to use either warm or cool colors at this point

8. add color to circles with crayons, using same group of colors as are on numbers. make circles into spheres by adjusting hand pressure to go from light to dark

9. add the opposite group of colors with crayons to the shapes made with the 7 lines. again, going from hard to soft hand pressure to go from dark to light color tints

This project took us about one and a half meetings.