Lesson Plan Concepts - Colour

Moving on from lessons on Colour theory with my year sevens (Introduction, colour wheel & Browns + greys), we will next create a project around applying colour. For this, I will find an artist that uses colour in an interesting and accessible way and create a lesson plan around developing my students to learn from him.

In this blog post I hope to show my research and thought process throughout formulating an appropriate lesson plan and project idea. As per other Lesson Plan Concepts posts, I will review several artists and critically produce activity ideas from each artist.

Olafur Eliasson

Artist website - https://olafureliasson.net/uncertain

This is possibly the most fun and engaging artist website I've ever seen. Could in fact use this in the lesson to introduce students to his work in a fun way.

(The missing left brain, O, Eliasson.2022. A constantly changing lightshow of shapes, colours, and shadows, created through the reflection and refraction of light. Galleria Elvira González)

Eliasson has created a broad body of work that includes installations, sculptures, photography and paintings. The materials he uses range from moss, glacial melt-water and fog, to light and reflective metals. Eliasson's art comes from three particularly important interests. These are: his concern with nature, honed through his time spent in Iceland; his research into geometry; and his ongoing investigations into how we perceive, feel about and shape the world around us.

Eliasson puts experience at the centre of his art. He hopes that as you encounter it, you become more aware of your senses. You add meaning to the works as you bring your associations and memories to these experiences. You might also become more aware of the people around you with whom you form a temporary community. For Eliasson, this heightened awareness of yourself and other people creates a new sense of responsibility. Ultimately, he believes that art can have a strong impact on the world outside the museum. He is known for using large geometric sculptures that illuminate and shape light. His work can also feature colour wheels and so it develops nicely from the colour wheels that the year 7s have made already.

For a Lesson, applying this artist to the classroom, I would certainly make use of the artist's excellent website. This is a fun and engaging way for the students to explore his work, however it could take up a whole lesson . instead, I would stage a 'treasure hunt' for the students to find three artworks that use colour and print them all off. A fourth artwork would be chosen by myself which the students would be making an artist inspired work from, but it would be fun for them to find some other examples of how he uses colour. The three works that the students would need to find would be: 1. An example of using monochrome or primary colours, 2. An example of a colour wheel and 3. An example that uses greys or Browns. - This would tie together the lessons we have done so far.

The fourth work could be Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project (2003), in which he constructed a colossally sized sun in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern. I could create some more geometric templates for the students to fill in. Students could be given a choice to use monochrome/Harmonious colours to show geometric form with colour or to use contrasting complimentary colours.

Andy Warhol

Artist Website: https://www.warhol.org/

American visual artist, film director, producer, and leading figure in the pop art movement. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silk-screening, photography, film, and sculpture.

In the two works to the left, Warhol uses strong colour language to present the iconography of a dollar sign and Marilyn

Monroe.

Applying this to a lesson, students could be asked to reproduce images, symbols or letters in this style. Students could even use such symbols as Letters:

A: @ ,B: ℬ ,C: ζ ,D: Δ ,E: £ ,F: ƒ ,G: ḡ ,H: ℋ ,I: Ⓘ ,J: ♪ ,K: ₭ ,L: ℒ ,M: ℳ ,N: Ⓝ ,O: ø , P: Þ , Q: ,R: ☈ ,S: § ,T: † ,U: ☋ ,V: Ⅴ ,W: ω ,X: ⌧ ,Y: ɣ ,Z: ☡

Students can then be encouraged to make conscious decisions about colour (Harmonious, complimentary, etc.)

Bisa Bulter

Artist Website: https://www.bisabutler.com/

Butler’s work participates in and carries on the African American quilting tradition and her process and technique have developed in an innovative and individual way.

“The vibrancy and scale of Butler’s work really captivates viewers, and once they are pulled in, they experience an often startling realisation regarding materiality; that is, they discover what they are looking at is fabric rather than paint. This surprise paired with the arresting faces of her subjects fuels even closer looking. The complementary layers of narrative and materials create an immersive, dazzling, and compelling aesthetic experience,” - Erica Warren, Associate Curator of Textiles at the Art Institute of Chicago.

As Butler uses exiting fabrics in her 'paintings', she creates incredibly vibrant compostitions, that apply the playful colours and textures of the fabric to the shapes of the images. This achieves a style resemblant of fauvism.

This work below uses really playful colour compositions. The figure at the front has strongly uses all three primary colours. The flanking figures have harmonious and secondary colours mixed into their colour scheme as well as greys and browns and the background uses two complimentary colours. This utilises all of the colour theory we have looked at so far, all together in one piece.

Although this piece is very large and has a lot of elements, we can break it down into parts and apply it to the classroom setting as a project that is assembled over various lessons.

1. The background is a pattern work that separates graphically between two complimentary colours. This could be achieved through 'masking' areas of the canvas with tape etc.

2. The Foreground is very representative, but also the figures are constructed in a very geometric way. This could be simplified into abstract shapes, or simplified to show just the portrait etc.

This figure/portrait can be painted, then cut removed and stuck onto the canvas with the pattern from step 1.

(Bisa Butler, Southside Sunday Morning, (2018). Cotton and silk. 109 x 73 in.)

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