The Art of Reggie Laurent

Reggie Laurent's art is a great way to talk about line, color and unity with elementary school students. The site "Art is Fun" has photos, links and a wonderful interview with the artist. (click here) First graders will be focusing on the part of the interview where Laurent describes how he makes his art.

Instead of acrylics, students will create their art with collage, markers, white paint and white chalk. Step one will be cutting a few organic shapes out of white drawing paper.

Next, they will color the inside of the shape, using primary colors first, and leaving a white border.

That border will be used to draw patterns with crayons or markers. I kind of like the idea of using complementary colors or black, but that might be a bit much for first graders given our time constrictions.

When gluing the shapes on our black illustration board, we'll think about placement of colors.

The final step will be to make our white line to thread between and around the shapes, tying everything together.

In this sample the color inside the shapes was cake tempera with crayon borders. The white line was painted white tempera with white chalk drawn over it.

I first heard about Reggie Laurent from Joanna at We Heart Art. See her kids' version of his work here.
I love the contrast created in this art!! I'll post kids' results when they are finished.