Using Color Cells - In the style of Chuck Close

I was thinking about creating some good projects to teach VALUE....Value is the lightness or darkness of a color.

For most paintings it is usually the one element that can make or break a composition....shadows and highlights are on this value scale.

If you have a painting that just isn't working you might want to test for value...you can do this by making a Value finder as I describe here or taking a black and white photo of your painting to show your values.

In the art world Chuck Close is an contemporary American painter famous for his large black and white paintings of faces....he often uses a color cell technique or color grid.  I find his more abstract work extremely compelling......and this is a good place to start with young kids.(grades 1-3)

For older students you can use the color grid technique and produce more recognizable portraits.



In this project we are limiting our palette and just focusing on value.  You can focus on a single color or just a warm or cool color combination.

Valentine Inchies

Here is a Valentine project that can be done 2 ways..... the kids can each make up their own collection of "inchies" or each child makes a class set of one type of "inchie" and then the kids do an exchange.

They are kinda of like miniature valentines that the kids can share.

Polar Bears Revisited

Last year I did a post on my Polar Bears but did not have many pictures of it's adaptation for the classroom. 

I completed this year's Polar Bears with Grade 1 last week and presented it as part of this weekend's workshop with Calgary teachers so I thought I would update this post for all of you out there in blogland!

Glue Stamped Papers

When putting together an art project my first priority is to get the kids to make as many of the materials as I can.

Now I'll admit it's easy to walk into a scrap booking or art supply store and fall in love with all the different papers....but it's so much more fun to make you own (cheaper too)!

Whenever I give one of my presentations I always talk about building a paper stash.  What I mean by this is as you work on a project make a few extra papers...they always come in handy. Store them by color and pull them out when you need a quick cut and paste project.  Because the papers are handmade the project will look incredible and the kids will remember all the techniques they used to create them.

"Postcard from Paris" Valentine

I've been putting together a few projects for St. Valentine's Day and this is one of them. A vintage looking photograph/ postcard idea. To make this postcard you need:

How to Make Plaster Frescoes

Frescoes have been around for a long time in the art world.  We are all familiar with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel but frescoes were around long before that.

The earliest evidence of the "wet plaster" fresco technique dates back to 2000 - 1550 BC or the Middle Bronze age. 

You can easily reproduce this technique in the classroom. 

Wayang Kulit: How to Make Indonesian Shadow Puppets

Well I hope everyone had a wonderful relaxing holiday break!!  I have had a major hard drive failure so sorry for the big break between posts.


The kids were back at school today but I won't be in until next week as I try to put my studio back together after the Christmas whirlwind!

Today I want to introduce you to Wayang Kulit or Indonesian Shadow puppets.  Now you can find shadow or transparent puppets in many Asian countries...those of you who saw the remake of the Karate Kid movie will recall a scene set at a puppet show using some traditional Chinese transparent puppets, quite similar to the shadow puppets.