2nd Grade dives into their imaginations to draw and paint a Dragon. We learned how to mix secondary colors and how to use the back of our paint brushes for a non-conventional way to texturize our fire-breathing friends!
Dragons are, as I have recently learned, a favorite in the art room. I was telling the kids about the Chinese New Year Parade Dragon and how it is one massive, colorful, movable puppet that people walk under to celebrate the New Year. Imaginations were starting to really blossom now...
With that vision in mind, I had the students close their eyes and think about what colors their dragon would look like, if they could make one for the parade. Holding that vision tightly, I guided them through a basic drawing of a dragon with black oil pastel.
Next, we started to mix the secondary colors, starting with yellow (attempting for the first time the no-brush-washing-in-between color method - works!!). I made a really nifty color wheel that diagrams how many "scoops" of yellow and "scoops" of red will make orange. Now this varies with different brands of paint...Luckily I tried the method out before teaching this way.
Going counter clockwise, we worked around the wheel making sure our secondary colors were not "too red", or "not too blue". Violet was particularly challenging to mix. Red is a strong pigment and many were satisfied with the tertiary red-violet - which is fine! But it was important that they understood that this is a different color than Violet.
After we mixed our wheels we painted our dragons as we wished. While the paint was still wet, we used the back of our brushes to add line texture to our dragons - bringing us back to concepts from the beginning of the 16 weeks - implied line, visual texture, pattern. At the very end they could use touches of primary colors.
