Warm and Cool Colours

I adapted this lesson from one I found on Pinterest. Here students experiment with the Artist's Toolkit, exploring warm and cool colours. We discovered which colours are warm and which are cool, and how we can use these colours to show temperature, time of day and even emotions!

We used pencil to draw, black oil pastel to outline and chalk pastels to colour in the scenery. 

We discussed the characteristics of a landscape and the differences between the background and foreground. Students learned that by layering objects in our pictures they appear further away. 

Students had the choice to use warm colours in the sky (background) and cool colours in the (foreground) valleys and mountains. 

We faced some challenges along the way. Some students needed more explicit modelling when it came to making concentric circles. Some made the connection to the circle continuing behind the mountains and around the other side invisibly. Others did not see this connection and drew "C's" that were disconnected. Some students made their concentric circles very skinny, and therefore plentiful. This made it very difficult to colour in.

Blending and smudging pastels is very messy. Students were advised to hold onto a paper towel to rub their fingers on, and to wash their hands often. They were reminded not to rest their hands on the paper while colouring so as to not smudge the colours across the paper.

When I saw similar lessons on Pinterest, the first thing I noticed was that there are many examples of the same artwork, in that the students simply reproduced the teacher's example. I try not to do too many examples, for hope that they will apply the skill taught and make their artwork their own. Then, I worry afterwards that the pictures are going to become the same pictures kids usually draw, and the skill will be lost. 

I had to take a step back and ask myself what I hoped my students learned from this assignment. Did I want them to learn to simply copy a design style, or actually create a style of their own? I wanted them to learn the difference between foreground and background, I wanted them to layer objects so that objects that were further away were hidden behind objects in the foreground, I wanted them to learn the difference between warm and cool colours, and I wanted them to experiment with pastels. If the pictures became full of birds, trees, and flowers, then so be it!

My suggestion to the students who wanted to add their own spin to the picture was to make their elements pop by using the opposite warm or cool colours. If they chose cool colours for the foreground, then I would like them to use warm colours for their accents. Where students had difficulty was when it came to the mountains further back. Some started colouring those in the same colour as the sky, rather then the same colour as the rest of the hills.