03 Dececember - Landscape Mural

5th Grade

Description: This lesson deals with the visual art standards of using complementary colors and contrast successfully in an artwork. In this lesson, students will create a collaborative mural of a landscape.

Materials

Oil pastels

white butcher paper on a long roll (cut to size)

white construction paper

color wheel

scissors

masking tape

glue, glue stick

Process

1. Explain to students they will be creating a mural based on a familiar landscape using complementary color to contrast and monochromatic colors to blend. You (or the class) can decide what kind of landscape the class should create. One idea for this landscape would be for the students to depict Cardiff and surrounding coastal area. Last year a class did a moonscape.

2. Review primary and secondary colors. (They should all know this)

3. Talk about color schemes (the following is from a lesson I gave to 2nd graders so you can adjust it to 5th graders)

What is a color scheme = a plan of colors that an artist wants to use in an artwork. When you guys draw a picture do you think about which colors to use before hand or do you choose randomly as you go along – artist do both – when they choose colors they have a lot of different reasons for choosing the colors that they do. Maybe they want things to blend together or maybe they want something to stand out. Maybe they use colors that are the way they look in nature, green trees, blue sky etc.

Did you know that colors have opposites? Black/white but all colors have their opposites too. Any idea what the opposite of red is? green Artists call opposite colors complementary. (Complementary colors are across from each other on the color wheel.) Hold up the piece of orange construction paper next to the blue construction paper. What do you notice when we put these two colors next to each other? Take away the blue piece of construction paper and replace it with the yellow. Hold up the orange and yellow construction papers. Now ask the students: How does the orange color look to you now? Students should notice the orange and blue combination seems to “pop” while the yellow and orange combination is very similar and mutes the two colors. When complementary colors are next to each other they look brighter. Artists might use complementary colors when they want something to stand out. (Show picture with a complementary colored object that stands out- Copies of these paintings are with the 5th grade art supplies.)

Tiger in a Tropical Storm - Henri Rousseau - the red flowers and the tiger’s red mouth stand out against the green foliage.

Snap the Whip, 1872 Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)

The red house contrasts against the green surroundings.

Edward Bannister Sabin Point, 1885 - Red people stand out against the green background

3. When artists want things to blend together they use a monochromatic color scheme. Mono = prefix that means one, chroma =comes from the greek word for color. So, how many colors in a monochromatic color scheme? One! They can use black white and gray also because technically they aren’t colors. You can use black as black or add black to the color to make a darker value of the color. (remember value!) Explain to the students that they can show value with color too. if you add black to a color its called a shade and if you add white to a color its called a tint.

For example, ask the students to name the many different shades of the same color in a piece of artwork. (You can look at the different shades and tints of green in the pictures above. Or the different shades of brown in this painting.)

Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912)

5. Divide the class into three (or more) groups to equally represent the components of a landscape (for example buildings, landforms, vegetation, and animals) You might want to have the landforms group work on the butcher paper background with paint. Maybe the whole class should talk about the landforms and what color they will be so the others will know how to blend or contrast. For example: The landform group will paint sky (blue) water (blue) and sand (yellow). Then if someone in the animal group wants to make an ocean animal but they want it to stand out they know to make it orange.

6. Have groups brainstorm on scrap paper making a list of items they could draw for the mural. Students will then draw these items on white construction paper. They will color them with oil pastel cut them out and then paste them onto the butcher paper taped to the floor to form a cohesive mural. Remind students to use complementary color to contrast or complementary to blend while working on their mural pieces - they do not have to use natural color.