Friday, April 27, 2012

Color Wheel Aliens


Color theory is one of the most important design lessons I teach in middle school.  Colors can influence our moods and as many fashion and advertising experts know, our purchasing habits too.  When I was in college, my first painting professor challenged us to make as many shades of black using only the three primary colors.  This exercise taught me to really recognize the different tints, shades, and tonal subtleties in colors. 6th graders learned some of the basics about color theory.  We discussed what primary and secondary colors are, and even went further into tertiary and analagous (friends on the color wheel) colors. 

Students were given the task to use the three primary colors (red, blue, yellow) to make an entire color wheel.  They mixed the secondary and tertiary colors using only the primaries.  To make it a little more interesting, we decided to add some fun and make our colorwheels space-themed.  We splatter painted the backgrounds to look like stars and galaxies.  I'm very proud of how well the 6th graders have retained and displayed their new color knowledge.

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