Complementary Color Op Art Assignment

Once you have a color wheel made, you can begin to discuss the relationships and positions of colors on the wheel to form color harmonies. A complementary color scheme consists of two colors that are opposite on the color wheel. They have nothing in common, but that's OK-opposites attract! The contrast in these combos pop in a way that make them perfect for sports teams like the Florida Gators or New Orleans Saints.

yellow-orange/blue-purple compliments

I teach complements by setting three bottles primary colored paint on a table: red, yellow, and blue. These are the first and most essential colors that you need to make all of the other colors (secondary, tertiary and beyond). Two primaries make a secondary. I ask, "What do yellow and blue make?" "Green!" they answer. "And what is left over?" "Red." ":What is the opposite of green?" "Red!"  A primary color's complement is the secondary color that is a combination of the remaining primaries. So in a pair of complementary colors, you get all three primaries. The root of the word complement means "to complete." I continue to hold up a primary colored bottle of paint while students look at the remaining two colors to figure the secondary color that would make up the opposite until the concept is solidified.

Students can also look at their color wheel to find compliments other than the primaries and secondary three combos: red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple. These tertiary colors are just shifted slightly to be a yellow-orange and blue-purple. or a blue-green and a red-orange.  When naming the tertiary colors the primary color always comes first and secondary color second. The name is the recipe for mixing. You would never have an orange-yellow, because orange can't describe a yellow. yellow is yellow. Once you mix in a little orange it is no longer yellow, it is orange.

Some students chose to work markers. Scented markers can be useful for my students who are blind. Others worked in colored pencil. Some were able to shade and highlight their shapes to make the optical illusion a little more effective. 

I outlined in hot glue the Wiki Stix drawings of students who are totally blind. Then I placed tiny pieces of Wiki Stix in every other space to make a checker board. The students could color each space without the tactile "dot" in one color, then use the complementary color to color each space with a dot, one by one, removing the dots along the way.  Student with very little vision used a VisioBook magnifier to zoom in on his shapes, which were also outlined in hot glue. It had been a dozen years since I assigned this color project, but I think the students were pretty pleased with their final pieces.

 

We Value Value Drawing: Geometric Form Value Drawing

Once my art students had filled page after practicing geometric forms, they created a traditional still life drawing using plastic geometric forms. They were required to create the illusion of space using the following techniques:

• Intuitive perspective (parallel lines going back in space with the back lines being the same length or shorter than the ones in front)
• Overlapping (part of a form can't be seen because there is another in front is covering it up), 
• Vertical placement (the form closest to the front is closest to the bottom of the paper) the highter an object is on a page, the further back it appears in space.
• Shading the objects with 3 to 5 values on the gray scale, to create distinct planes and model round forms.

Students with low vision can't be an an art class where the still life is half way across the room, but they can sometimes see the one that is just a few inches in front of them.

Students who are completely blind, used Wiki Stix to trace the objects or measure the proportions and use the principles we learned during our 3D forms practice drawings. I traced their Wiki Stix drawings in hot glue to make them permanent. Value was created using charcoal or pastels. Some students opted for oil pastels because it was less messy, but we only had one gray oil pastel in each box, so that had to be mixed on the drawing with a white or a black to create a second gray.

The light source had to be consistent, meaning every object was dark on the same side and the cast shadow was going in the same direction as the dark side. Highlights were made by leaving paper white or using the eraser to go back in and brighten it up. The edge of a piece of paper was used to use as a stencil and smudge against which created sharp edges.

These basic drawing skills will be used in upcoming projects, and I hope that students will be able to build on them the rest of their lives.