With this project the first grade students, "made like Mondrian." Mondrian is an artist who used primary colors and perceived objects as simple shapes. The first graders mimicked his style while making these Mondrian's out of construction paper.
During this project the students learned about the artist, Paul Klee, and his use of bright colors with geometric shapes. He also sometimes used patterns within his artwork, and the first graders did a wonderful job creating Paul Klee cities with their own patterns.
The first graders learned about the order of the rainbow, and how it is often referred to as ROY G BIV The students painted the rainbow in order, and each made their own ROY G BIV characters to easily associate the name with the rainbow and light.
The first grade students took many steps to complete this project. First, we painted a background of warm colors and then made circular patterns by dipping yogurt cups in paint and then onto our paper. After the background was complete we learned a little bit about the artist, Vincent Van Gogh and were inspired by his painting of sunflowers to create our own floral silhouettes.
We used a step by step method to create these warm and cool color sunsets on the water. For the top portion (painted with warm colors) we traces yogurt cups for our sun and used rulers to make straight sun rays. We then used our own creativity to make the wavy lines for the water and painted them with cool colors.
We painted backgrounds with cool colors and used a paper towel to create texture in the background of our snowy images. Then we talked about how pine trees are very similar to the shape of a triangle and painted them black for silhouettes. We also added cotton balls to create the snow on our images.
We learned about the artist, Sonia Delaunay, and her use of shapes, lines, and color. We each created our own composition with pencil (and the help of tracing lids and rulers) and then added our colors with paint.