Teaching the Elements of Art - Color
“You teach elementary art? That sounds fun!” It’s like it’s a given that art is nothing but fun to teach. Don’t get me wrong, it should be fun to teach, and it should be fun to learn at the elementary age, as most learning should be. However, that doesn’t mean you and your students can do whatever you want whenever you want! It still takes planning, prepping, aligning with standards and curriculum, and know-how. Art teachers need to know how to maintain a blissfully buzzing art room, where the kids feel confident and focused. Art teachers need to know how to teach various media and the techniques that go along with them. And art teachers are expected to have inspiring art rooms where creative projects are born.
But what art teachers need to know, like the back of their hand, is the elements of art. Take it up a notch and incorporate the elements of design as well. I have to say that when I made the elements of art a focus in our projects, and included them as subject matter for inspiring art room walls, engagement went up. Like, way up! It made such a turnaround for me and my students. So why not get crystal clear and confident on the meaning and application of each element? It will make teaching simpler and more satisfying for you! So let’s get comfy with the elements and their meanings.
I have a series of blog posts about each element of art. In these posts, we learn about the definition of each element, why it matters in art, we take a look at some examples from artists, and talk about ways to incorporate the elements in your art room and in projects. I will include helpful, handy links at the bottom of each post to give you more ways to explore each element. Color is the star of the show in this post, so let’s get started!
In a basic definition, color is the hue we perceive when light reflects off an object. We can’t have color without light! Now, if you want to get into the science behind color, do so in fourth grade when students are learning about waves in science. Why not incorporate light waves as part of their art education? It’s fun to blow their minds and show that light waves are invisible, and yet the different wavelengths are responsible for creating all of the colors we see. I like the visuals and the explanation from Science Learning Hub, and I show them to my fourth-grade students as well. Ok, let’s get into more about color!
In art, color has many roles, but one of the most important is to convey feeling. Consider this: a dreary seascape in muted shades versus a sunset exploding with the brilliance of fireworks! Greens and blues evoke a calming nature walk, while cheerful bursts of color radiate joy, like a mixed flower bouquet. A great example to show your students would be to compare and contrast the warmth of van Gogh’s Sunflowers to Picasso’s cools in The Old Guitarist. Van Gogh wanted to give a warm welcome to his friend Paul Gauguin when they lived together in the yellow house, so he painted a series of sunflower paintings to hang around the house. A cheery welcome indeed! Imagine if he had painted The Potato Eaters for this purpose. Would that make Gauguin feel welcome?
Now imagine The Old Guitarist hanging in your home. If you wanted your home to feel somber, serious, and somewhat sad, well, that would be the painting to do it. Artists often show their own emotions in their artwork. When Picasso painted that guitarist, it was during his Blue Period. It was a time in his life when he struggled to find joy, and it showed in his artworks. A couple of years later, Picasso had found happiness through friends and love, and suddenly blue is no longer a dominant color; instead, he was using pinks and red.
Encourage your students to explore feelings in their artwork! The most straightforward way to accomplish this would be to observe the effects of warm and cool colors. Show them the rainbow, and how the first three colors, red, orange, and yellow, make up the warm color range. The bottom half of the rainbow is the cool colors: green, blue, and violet. Observe images of van Gogh's Sunflowers and Picasso’s The Old Guitarist and have students find the warm and cool colors in each. Ask students what they think the artists were trying to do with these artworks. Ask them how they feel while viewing them. Give them tempera sticks, crayons, or oil pastels, divided into bins with only warms together and only cools together, so they are easy to find. Now ask them to draw a feeling with these supplies. You can give them prompts if you like, such as a vase of flowers, a snowy night, a sunset, a welcoming home, or a spooky house. Ask them to use mostly warms or mostly cools to show the feeling they want in their art.
For a more formalized approach, you can lead them through specific projects that focus on one feeling or another. Start with these color theory slides and posters, designed for all ages. They are perfect to aid in conversations before projects. The slides and posters will introduce you to our Hues characters who make learning the elements fun!
We created a Van Gogh sunflower project with a little art history video about Van Gogh. The project includes a Color Planner to help them choose a color scheme for their oil pastel sunflower. We also have a Winter Scene collage project that shows how color value is used to create depth. The final projects all hung together, making for a wintery collaboration of cool colors. For a deeper look into color and meaning, check out the Kandinsky Insect project. The project is designed for all ages. However, the biography and look into the Blue Rider artwork and the Erlkonig poem that may have inspired the artwork, take a dive into where color was used and how it was used. Great for fourth grade and up, and can be used to inspire more open-ended explorations in color.
Color is such a fun element, and we hope you and your students have fun learning and exploring the use of color in artwork to show feeling! It’s the one element that can be used in just about every project. Enjoy your color journey!
Links
Elements of Art Posters and Slides
Kandinsky - the Blue Rider/ E’re King Bio and Insect Project