on coloring

Coloring is big right now. Real big. Everywhere you look, you see coloring books. Adults are coloring big time. So it's not just for kids anymore.

So what's the deal?

Coloring is relaxing.
Coloring is meditative.
Coloring is great for fine motor practice.

But let's be honest. Coloring other peoples' drawings is not the same as making art.

As an art teacher who works hard to make sure that my art lessons are a combination of instruction in specific techniques or subject matter and a focus on kids' own creativity, the proliferation of coloring books and the focus and attention on coloring is something I look at with a dubious eye, because I know that a drawing of a family created by a child is so much more interesting than a coloring page of a family.

Coloring is fine, but it should not be used replace real art instruction, especially in today's standards-based, test-heavy classrooms where students creative opportunities are already cut to the bone.

Don't get me wrong. I am not anti-coloring. But I am pro-art education, and I know the value of allowing students to create their own masterpieces. That can never be done with a coloring page, because all the student is doing is filling in somebody else's idea. A student who draws herself inside a tent on a rainy day with the sun shining and flowers growing is learning a whole lot more than a child coloring in a traditional picture drawn by an adult.

In classrooms, coloring pages are often used as filler, handy for when a student finishes an assignment, or easy for a rainy day recess. And there's nothing wrong with this, as long as we recognize what it is: a relaxing activity that might help develop concentration, eye-hand coordination, and small motor skills.

But please, please, let's not call it art.

If teachers must use coloring pages in the classroom, I would at least like to see them add a bit of a challenging twist by giving students some parameters:
• use only analogous colors
• use only two contrasting colors, and do some shading
• use only one color, with different values
• draw and color a linear pattern in the background
• use only primary, secondary, or tertiary colors

Or better yet.... give kids some blank paper and a marker and let them create their own coloring pages! Or give them scissors, paper and glue and see what they come up with!

But most importantly, don't tell kids they get to do art and then hand out a coloring page.....

.... because coloring is not the same as making art.

Check out my TeachersPayTeachers store for teacher-friendly, authentic art lessons that rely on student creativity and which easily integrate across the curriculum. Enjoy!

Need some ideas? Start with this free resource: Making Time for Art.

flowers, shading, and the creative process

It's a common art lesson: close-up, enlarged flowers inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings. In this case, instead of paint, we used oil pastels. And because this particular second grade class had not used them before, I did do some modeling before turning them loose to work, showing them how to put down a bit of color and then spread it out with their fingertips to create the shading. They came up with the word smear during the demonstration.

First we did look at several examples of O'Keeffe's flower paintings. I chose ones that showed the centers, and made sure I had at least a few that went "off the page" because that was what I was going to ask them to do. They noticed that her paintings used bright colors, that the centers of the flowers had extra petals or other interesting parts, and one student noticed that there was a lot of shading. Yes! So on the chart I was creating, I set that word aside and gave it some prominence. I also wrote the word close-up off to the side, and reiterated that they would draw a flower in close-up, then shade it.

To demonstrate how to draw the flower itself, I showed them how to position a loosely drawn circle near the center of the paper, but not directly in the center, they to draw petals that went totally off the paper. I made a dramatic display of completing the petal shapes -- in the air, but not drawn -- going beyond the paper's edges. After demonstrating how to use the pastels, I posted several large, close-up photographs of flowers and had them take a look at color, shape, and some of the details in the centers of the flowers. I had intended to get into a discussion about radial symmetry, but decided to leave that for another time.

So I sent them off to create their own.

And we ended up with some beautiful results.

But before we got to this end point, some interesting things happened. Like one student doing the shading with the side of her fist. Like another student pressing some of the oil pastels so hard that the color was thick on the paper, with tactile texture, and the black lines from the Sharpies were missing. Like a few of the students deciding to color their flowers with each petal a different color.

I don't know if it's right or wrong, but I redirected these multi colorings in a direction that was more scientifically accurate, such as petals that were the same all the way around, whether they were one color or several colors.

So I learned some things, too, and had some things to consider. Like, how much modeling is enough? How much is too much, and how much is too little? Like, how much explanation is necessary? Like, at what point should a teacher just let the students mess with the colors, and at what point does the teacher step in and suggest something that is liable to produce a result that is more likely to follow the initial directions?

I want them to be creative, but I also want them to learn art technique that works, how materials are used to their best advantage, and to end up with a successful piece of art work that still shows their personality, and not mine. And most of all, I want them to think about what they are doing in the process, to take care with it, care about what they are doing, and like and be proud of it when they are finished.

I think these pretty much fit that bill:

coloring

Sometimes I work backward, like with this little color theory activity. One day on Facebook I came upon a free turkey-coloring page that was filled with pattern. Normally I avoid coloring pages like the plague, preferring students to be creating their own drawings. But there was just something about this one. I thought maybe I could give some color instructions, like use all warm colors or all cool colors.

But then I had another idea: use analogous colors.

Rather than just tell students what analogous colors were, we would make a color wheel!

I thought all this through on the drive to school (40 minutes, mountains to valley, a view to die for... but I digress....)

I started by having students draw a large, equilateral triangle on the top half of their paper. It had to be large, so I checked for size right away. If it seemed small, I had them turn it over and make it bigger. That triangle was superimposed by another triangle the same size, but "upside down" (which, of course, is a misnomer, since a triangle is a triangle no matter what direction it sits in, but I digress again....)

At the very top, I asked them to make a yellow circle and color it in, then do a red and blue on the other vertices of the first triangle. They knew what happened when red and yellow, blue and yellow, and red and blue are combined, so we drew and colored in circles of those colors in their appropriate vertices.

Under these triangles, I had them note "primary colors" and "secondary colors" and then we went on to the tertiaries. (I love that a box of crayons has all the colors one needs for this, but again, I digress...)

Finally, we were able to talk about those analogous colors... the ones next to each other. Once I felt confident that most of the students could identify three analogous colors using the color wheel (I had made a large one, along with them, as a model), I showed them the turkey page and gave directions to choose four analogous colors for coloring. The key was to have them show me their color choices before I gave them the coloring page. If they had an outlier, I asked them to look again.

As they finished coloring their turkeys, I had them write "This turkey is analogous." on their paper and then write on the back of the paper what analogous colors are.

They had a great color lesson, a relaxing coloring session, and got a little writing in to boot. I found something interesting to do with a plain old coloring sheet. Win-win for everybody!

The coloring sheet was found at http://doodle-art-alley.com.

about art materials

When I taught art in Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades for two years, I had the luxury of a generous budget and was able to buy all the art materials I needed for a basic art curriculum. I didn't wander off into anything fancy; I stuck to the basics and the process of creative art-making. These days, I am retired and subbing in other peoples' classrooms, and I am intrigued (and sorry to say, not in a very good way) about the lack of quality art materials out there for kids to use. When it comes to buying art materials, my philosophy is to always buy the best quality possible. The cost may be initially higher, but the returns are greater: they generally last longer, work better, and produce much better results. I stick pretty much to the basics and stay away from most "specialty" items like glittery watercolor or tapping glue bottles. I follow this philosophy both for classroom art materials and for my own art-making process, because I want kids to feel like artists when they are making art, not to struggle with the materials they are using.

What do I consider basic? And are some brands better than others? Does it really matter what brand you buy?  You bet!  My favorites...

CRAYONS.   Good quality crayons have better color, probably due to the ratio of pigment to wax (I'm not a crayon scientist, so I'm guessing here). Poor quality crayons have more wax and the colors are not as bright, no matter how hard you press. I won't buy anything but Crayola. The reds are bright. The yellows are strong. Many teachers buy cheaper brands and my experience is that the colors are just very bland. And by the way, I want the colors to be named what they are. I came across some crayons in a friend's classroom that had color names like Blueberry Swirl or Grape Soda (I am making those up, but you get the gist), which are very cute and all, but were not even that accurate. Colors have names and don't need to be cutified. I like that Crayola names their blues Indigo, Blue, Cerulean. These are real names that artists use.

CONSTRUCTION PAPER CRAYONS are great to have on hand. They are made for drawing on dark colored construction paper. They have some kind of reflective material in them. Kids love using them! They are made by Crayola, and are wrapped with black paper so they are easily distinguished if they get mixed with regular crayons. For general storage, I like to keep crayons in zip baggies instead of in their boxes. It's easy for kids to find the color they need, and a whole class set will fit in one shoebox-sized plastic tub.

MARKERS:  I like Crayola markers for kids' use. They seem to last a pretty long time and the colors are pretty bright. I always store them with the tips facing down. This way, the ink is always saturating the tip and they stay nice and "juicy" instead of drying out. Laying them down in a tub works, also. For my own use, on charts and for art lessons where I do demonstrations, I use Mr. Sketch. The colors are very vibrant and the chisel point lets me make bolder lines so that the charts are easy to read. I like the smelly ones.

COLORED PENCILS:  Crayola again, although there are other brands that are pretty good, too. I like having a good supply of multiple, basic colors. I generally buy boxes of 12 colors and then dump them all in a plastic tub. They are great for still-life and other observation drawing.

GLUE STICKS:   I only buy UHU. It's firmer than cheaper glue sticks, doesn't clump or squish into a mess, and lasts a lot longer than any other brand I've used. I once put in an order for UHU glue sticks when I was teaching art, and the school secretary substituted a cheaper brand. I was working in three schools at the time, and guess at which school the glue sticks got used up first? These are definitely noticeably more expensive than other brands, but very well worth it in the long run. They have a "screw" top which I like. For some reason, kids seem to smoosh them less. Maybe because they are less smooshable.

WHITE GLUE:  Elmers.  The regular kind. Not the washable kind, the school glue kind, the clear gel kind (oh, that's the worst). Just the regular "Glue-All" kind. What I really really hate is those tapping bottles that drive me crazy when kids are doing collages. I think teachers buy them because they are tired of kids wasting glue, but it's not that hard to teach kids how to use small dots of glue. As for longevity, I always made sure to remind kids to close the stopper and wipe the glue off the tip, and then store the bottles standing up. It's that easy. The bottles will last practically forever.

SCISSORS:  I like "pointy" scissors, even for Kindergartners. They just seem to cut better. They seem more serious.  Fiskars makes a pretty nice pair of scissors for little hands, and they seem to work fine for either hand, so you don't need any special left-handed ones. 

PENCILS:  Dixon Ticonderoga. Nothing else will do. They are great for drawing. They have good, soft erasers. They sharpen well without breaking. They are worth the extra few cents per dozen. They last longer, write smoother, sharpen easier, and erase without smudging. I could write a whole blog post just about pencils. Another time. When the erasers go, as they will, I offer Pink Pearl erasers, not one for each student, but several stored near the pencil sharpener. (Which is a whole other post, but I swear by a good pencil sharpener.)

And last, but definitely not least .....  PAPER!  

I like good quality CONSTRUCTION PAPER, like Tru-Ray, because the paper is smoother and the colors are nice and bright. And by all means.... save all the scraps for collage-making!  It's a good idea to invest in some white DRAWING PAPER.  It comes in reams and is not too expensive. I like having both 9x12 and 12x18 on hand. It can be used when construction paper is not really needed but copy paper or newsprint is too thin. Regular, ordinary COPY PAPER is great for pencil drawing. It's nice and white, relatively inexpensive, and looks great on the wall in a gallery. Under no circumstances would I ever use any kind of newsprint for art lessons. Ever. Not even for sketching. It's just too ugly.

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FOR BEST RESULTS, TREAT STUDENTS LIKE ARTISTS

If you buy the best you can afford, or even go a little over your budget, it will pay in the long run. When the budget is limited (and when isn't it, but I mean seriously limited) and you're tempted to buy cheaper materials, consider buying less units and get higher quality instead. Maybe it's better to have 10 boxes of high quality crayons and have kids share, than to have 20 boxes of poor quality crayons with drab color. Maybe it's better for three students to share a good stick of UHU glue stick than to have each student have their own stick of gooey, messy substandard glue stick. Every student does not always need their own everything.

Treat students like artists, and maybe they will make great art!

Enjoy! Create!

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about sky...

I am always intrigued by the way kids will tackle sky. Often, they draw puffy clouds and then color them blue, leaving the "sky" part white. I will ask, "What color are clouds?" and they always say, "white" and I just say "hmmmm... yes they are...." and wander away, leaving them to ponder their blue clouds. So one day I decided to teach second graders a sky technique.

I started by having a discussion about what the word "landscape" means and what we might see in a landscape. I had them all look out the window and describe what was closest to the classroom (a few trees) and to notice how large they looked compared to the ones far away across the field. I had posted a sheet of 9x12 white paper on which, with a black Sharpie, I drew a couple of trees, fairly large. Then I asked what else might be there: Rocks. Water. Grass. Flowers. Bushes. I put in some of those things. Then I added some low hills in the background, then another layer of hills behind those, and some mountains behind those. 

I then colored in the sky with a broken, unwrapped crayon, using the side of the crayon and leaving some spaces white to suggest clouds. Their reaction? "Oooohhhh....." Another thing I modeled was using the sides of the broken crayons to do some "blending" in the foreground.

I gave them directions to draw a landscape, including hills and mountains in the background, by starting with the foreground and working back. They were to use a Sharpie (so double paper to keep the desks clean) and not color anything in while drawing. After they had the landscape finished, they were to color some of the landscape while leaving some parts white, and create their sky the same way I did. I decided to ask them to leave some parts white partly to save time and partly to focus on their drawings without getting them obliterated.  A few students tried the blending technique while they were coloring their landscapes.

The results were colorful, interesting, and fanciful.

They did a great job and I learned something, too. Most of the kids drew the tops of their mountains near the top of the paper, leaving very little sky space. The next time I try this, I will make sure to emphasize that they leave at least 1/3 of the space for sky. All in all, though, I think they did a great job! And they had a good time, too.

sunbursts, starbursts, and silhouettes

Sometimes when I am looking for an idea for an art lesson, I scout around the Artsonia website. That's where I found these interesting starburst designs, done with primary and secondary colors. They looked easy and fun so I decided to try them in warm or cool colors with a second grade class. To introduce the lesson, I just posted a piece of paper and started drawing with three warm colors:  yellow, gold, and orange. I tried to emphasize the zigzaggy method of creating concentric circles of rays. After I had laid down about six rows, I put up another paper and started another one with cool colors: turquoise, blue, and purple. During this introduction, I did not speak at all. When I had two good starts, a warm one and a cool one, I had the students tell me what I did. These became the directions:

- choose 3 colors, warm or cool
- start near the center with a dot
- get bigger and bigger
- fill the whole paper
- no scribbling!

I gave them directions to choose three warm or cool colors and show them to me. Several students mixed the palettes; instead of giving them paper, I said, "you have two warms and one cool" or "you have two cools and one warm." I didn't tell them which color needed to be replaced; I left that up to them. As they got started, I quickly noticed that some students had difficulty making the short, zigzaggy strokes radiating out from the center of the circle. A few were coloring concentric lines instead, or lines that looked like open zigzags. For those few students, I took their hand in mine and showed them how to make the little zigzags.

When the first student had finished filling the whole paper, I interrupted their work for a lesson in making the cityscape silhouette. On black construction paper, I first drew a line across the bottom, a few inches up. Then I started with a tall rectangle in the center for a building, added a roof, and proceeded to add more rectangles until building shapes extended across the whole paper. I pointed out to the students how the buildings were not touching, but were pretty close to each other. I demonstrated cutting them carefully, and gluing down the silhouette. I made a big deal about putting the glue on the side of the paper that has the pencil lines so that the clean side will be the one we see when it's done. When I held up the finished product, there were a lot of oooohs and aaaaahs.

When doing the silhouette, some students mistakenly cut off the baseline, or cut off one of the buildings by accident, so they needed to do that part over. A few students put the glue on the wrong side of the paper (this always happens!) so we needed to do a little erasing. Overall, the results were pretty striking, especially when they were lined up along the white board tray.

And what about the other half of the black paper? Students were very intrigued by the opposite effect, and asked what to do with them. I decided to collect them and use them for a future activity. I haven't invented that one yet, but they are safe in a manila envelope.

hands

On a day near the end of the school year, when I found myself substituting in a second grade classroom where I had never been before, for a teacher I had never met, in an emergency situation in which there were no lesson plans, the first thing I did was scout around the cupboards to see what art materials might be available. I found some white construction paper that had been cut to about 9x18, so I pulled it out, sorted through it for pieces that were not bent or torn, counted out enough sheets for the class, consulted my little folder stash of emergency ideas, and decided to have the students do some line designs with their hands.

I demonstrated on the white board what to do:  I traced my hand along with part of my arm, then drew five lines across the paper in different directions, crossing over the traced hand and extending the lines off the edges of the paper. I gave directions to color in all the spaces however they liked, and let them go to work. It was interesting to see that some students drew all their lines extending off two edges of the paper, while other students drew some of their lines stopping at other lines rather than crossing them.

These students had just had three substitute teachers in two days, so they were pretty antsy to begin with, but this activity pretty much captured everyone's interest. They didn't have to do a lot of thinking, but it did quiet them down and the results are actually pretty striking. This would be a great activity for any substitute teacher needing an hour to kill.

I could see doing this using only warm or cool colors, or warm colors in the hand spaces and cool colors in the background spaces, or patterns in the hand spaces with plain colors in the background spaces (or vice-verse), or using only three analogous colors, or different values of one color, or using watercolors, or pastels, or adding textured rubbings, or doing it with two hands, or three hands....

I'm pretty sure this is something I will do again. It was easy, fun, interesting, and needed no planning whatsoever!

hearts

One of my pet peeves in children's art work is the use of cliches like hearts, rainbows, and suns in the corner, which have a bad habit of appearing in drawings willy-nilly, just because the student is falling back on known shapes rather than exploring new ones. Some will disagree with me, but that's where my thinking is. Anyway, that doesn't mean I dislike hearts, rainbows, or suns... I just want them to be necessary in the art work.

In this activity, the heart is the only subject matter. It is an easy, easy, easy activity that is practically foolproof. It requires no prep; all that's needed is white construction paper (we used 9x12, but a bit smaller would work, too) and crayons. To introduce the activity, I showed an example of a piece of art work by Jim Dines, who has done tons of art with hearts. I had students tell what they noticed and wrote their responses on the board next to the photograph (see photo at the end of this post). After this introduction, we reviewed warm and cool colors and I explained that students would need to draw a very large heart (I demonstrated) and that they would fill the heart with warm or cool colors (their choice) and the background with the opposite palette. I gave a short little demonstration to show how to color to make it look "markerish" .... that was one of the students' observations.... and then sent them off to go to work. I did wander around and show some of the students individually how to put color in smallish patches, but otherwise they were pretty much on their own.

When the color was done, most students outlined the heart with black crayon, then chose a mounting color that was from the same palette as the colors used in the heart. This took most students about an hour to complete, and some of them worked during lunch time. It turned out to the a perfect activity for a rainy, rainy Friday in a second grade classroom!


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