Sunday, September 9, 2012

Tints, Shades and "Lollipop Trees"

These great trees that are near our school will be 3rd graders' jumping off point for this week's Lollipop Trees.

The tree trunks will be any color of crayon (on old telephone book pages) and shaded to create the illusion of 3 dimension. This part of the project presents an opportunity to represent shapes students see in nature. (The photo will be enlarged on the Smartboard for all to see.)

The "lollipops" will start with a pure hue dot (in honor of International Dot Day, Sept. 15th) in the center, surrounded by concentric circles of two lighter tints. I hope that the kids have time to create 5 or 6 circles. They will be using tempera cakes for the main color, but liquid tempera for the white. I have white plastic palettes for students to mix their tints.

In this sample there are six lollipops representing the colors on the color wheel.

Here is another tree sample from another class where the lollipops were created using complementary crayon designs with a watercolor wash.
When I have the time, I like to teach the class Burl Ives' version of the song, "The Lollipop Tree." A great lesson for another day would be for kids to draw the story of the song as a storyboard!!

7 comments:

  1. Ahh, Burl Ives!! The Big Rock Candy Mountain would be a great art inspiration too!! I pinned this cool image that I called 'lollipop trees' on a Pinterest board that also uses values - though I never got around to making it into a lesson. Check out the picture:
    http://media-cache-lt0.pinterest.com/upload/221520875390853115_yCvWVpG1.jpg

    By the way, those are fabulous (real) trees - what kind are they? The artwork is very Hundertwasser. I see lots of links and possibilities for this lesson.

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    1. I like your pinned lollipop trees, too. Would be good for teaching 1 point perspective AND Hundertwasser. The inspiration for the lollipops on the final tree above was actually a combination of Steve Roden (a So. Calif. artist) and Hundertwasser.

      The real trees are actually VERY large ficus trees. We have a LOT of ficus trees on the streets surrounding our school, but I think these may be the largest. They are terrific looking, but they do come with the potential hazard of roots that break sidewalks!!

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  2. Christie! I love the lollipop trees! I also love using recycled phone books to add texture! I am so stealing this idea (with your permission of course!)

    :)pat

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    1. Use and enjoy -- definitely!! Hope you are getting around OK -- are you on crutches???

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  3. Those trees near your school are so cool. It's no wonder they inspire you and your kids to make art.

    I never heard of International Dot Day. I love it. Thanks for the info, Christie!

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  4. A fantastic project! I love your blog - lots of great ideas, will be following you with interest!!

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    1. Thanks for stopping by to visit. We were working on this project yesterday. I'll post some pix next week when the kids finish up. Meanwhile, there are Dots everywhere around our school now to celebrate Dot Day. Will post those sometime this weekend.

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