Color, Shape, & Line Designs

 Can you believe one project can cover primary colors, secondary colors, geometric shapes, organic shapes, line, AND pattern? This project is full of juicy art elements and principles and was really fun to do as a beginning of the year review.

I couldn't resist playing this video for my students to get the ball rolling for this lesson on color mixing. The song is so catchy, OK Go is super arty and creative as a band, and stop animation is beyond mesmerizing for artists of all ages!

"The are three primary colors, And lots of other colors out there too. But when you're seeing any other color, they are all made up of red, yellow, and blue."

What a beautiful lyric! 

This is what my visual board looked like. I confess, I downright stole the idea for this geometric/organic shape poster design from Mrs. Impey over at Art Room 104 because I think it is just the coolest ever! The poster definitely helped the students distinguish between the two shape categories. One student pointed out that the organic shapes reminded him of the watery designs in the Spongebob Squarepants television show which I thought was a pretty accurate observation.

This is what our paintings looked like after two days work. On the first meeting day we drew ten geometric shapes and painted them using only primary colors. On the second day we filled in the space between our geometrics with organics shapes. These shapes were painted in the secondaries which were hand mixed on a palette. I enjoyed seeing the 3rd graders utilize the color wheel as a tool to look up all the color recipes that they forgot. They are really making progress at becoming independent problem solvers. It made me feel immensely proud of them.

On the third and final day of work the students worked with black and white paint to outline all of their shapes and add patterns where they saw fit. My favorite thing about this project is the variety of responses it inspires. Way to hit it out of the park, 3rd grade!