Area of Study: Color Wheel, Primary and Secondary Colors
Skills Learned: Identifying Tint, Tone, & Shades of Colors
Length of Lesson: 1 1/2 hour to 2 hours, may take two class sessions
EQ: How can aspects of VALUE be applied to COLOR?
Key Objectives:
Create a unique color wheel with images of citrus fruit
Apply color tint, tones, and shades to complete an acrylic painting
Materials Needed:
Acrylic Paint
Paintbrushes (a big size and a skinnier one for details)
Water cups
Paper towels
Easels
Canvas or Canvas Paper
Special Materials Needed:
Color Wheel with Values (for comparison)
Value Example of One Color
Real Lemon or Orange slices (optional)
Prep:
Cut up some scrap paper for practice
If using canvas paper, cut into large squares and tape down canvas with Artist's Tape to hard surface
Overview of Guided Instruction:
Teacher introduces COLOR WHEEL, PRIMARY COLORS, and SECONDARY COLORS and their VALUES or tint, tone, and shade.
Students practice making at least one COLOR with it's TINTS, TONES, and SHADES on scrap piece of paper.
After drawing the basic outlines of citrus fruit with pencil on the canvas, students begin to paint background of image (middle) with practice color mixed for previous step.
*Can be Teacher or Student choice*
Teacher guides students in practice of some citrus shapes (use visuals) on practice paper and when ready again can start mixing the base colors for each citrus shape.
Students paint each citrus with one color and it's values and HUE used as highlights and details.
Creating the Project:
Step 1
After drawing guidelines of each citrus slice, begin by painting background with your practice color.
Step 2
Start painting each citrus slice with the BASE COLOR for each primary and secondary color. Make sure you apply each color around in the right order and using the HUE is the easiest to start with.
Step 3
Now you can start mixing each color and it's tints, tones, and shade and start applying them to each citrus slice. I have included a photo of where each tone and tint, etc go and I also drew this up on the board as you see here too. The visual makes it a lot easier for the students who move quicker or slower than others, like a little cheat sheet! Everyone can move at their own pace.
As you can see, I have also numbered each step so you can follow that order and create this painting with ease. I also included the drawn part of the circles on the board and the important definitions of our values we are learning to mix.
The easiest way is to just move around the circle applying each step one by one until you have a complete color wheel. Color mixing and applying the details is what takes the most time, this may take up to two classes.
You can see how that the HIGHLIGHTS are going in using tints or tones or shades.
*A close up of each side of the painting so far*
Step 4:
Add any last minute details and make sure each VALUE is used.
Assessment:
Each student mixed every color from only the three primary colors.
Each color is made into three distinct values.
Alternatives:
Beginners: Use only BLACK and WHITE as the details.
Advanced: Create a standard color wheel alongside project.
Vocabulary:
Color wheel - a circle with different colored sectors used to show the relationship between colors
Primary colors - three colors: red, yellow, and blue
Secondary colors - made of two primary colors: purple, orange, and green
Tint - hue of color mixed with white
Tone - hue of color mixed with grey (black and white)
Shade - hue of color mixed with black
Hue - another word for color
Value - the lightness or darkness of colors