An art lesson that promotes mathematical thinking – oh joy.  With the main focus being on the art concept of positive and negative space, throwing symmetry into the mix gave a nice extra punch to the lesson.

Positive space is the area on a piece of art which the subject occupies, while negative space is the area around the subject.  You can see in this symmetrical example that the positive space is the pink on the left, but changes to yellow on the right.

The method is quite simple.

1. Find two contrasting colors of the same sized paper.

2. Fold both papers in half to establish the line of symmetry.

3. Set one paper aside.

4. Cut the 2nd piece of paper in half on the fold you just made.  Discard one of the halves.

5. Draw 1/2 of a shape.  (Like you would do if you were making paper hearts and planned to open the paper up once the heart was cut out.  Except, in this case, you’ve already discarded the other half.)

6. Cut out your shape, keeping all pieces.

7. Place the positive space pieces on one side of the line of symmetry on the 2nd sheet of paper.  Place the negative space pieces on the other side.  Situate all the pieces so that they meet the line of symmetry perfectly and match up with one another.

8. Glue.

This lesson was inspired by Dick Blick and is one of the many integrated math and art lessons I’ve pinned on my Living Math Pinterest Page!

(Sorry, not the best photo, but I wanted you to see the possibilities.)

Personally, I think self-portraits (or any human figure for that matter) are very h-a-r-d to draw.  We have tackled self-portraits during art many times over the years and each time I see improvements.  Well, if you can call snot hanging out of the boy’s nose improvement.  Oh, what to do with 11 year old boys who think they’re funny??

This time around, we used a tutorial from Art Projects for Kids which helped the kids to understand spacing of their facial features.

What happened to my artist/picture study time?

Some of you have asked how I’m handling art and artist study this year.  We are integrating artist/picture study into history.  Diana Waring has done a great job including period art and artists into her History Revealed curriculum!  On weeks when we aren’t covering historical art/artists, we’re simply doing fun projects with various media that help grow art skills – such as drawing, perspective, shading, etc.

Where do I find my art ideas?

Lots of homeschooling moms tell me they really want to include art, but don’t know where to start.  I often struggle with knowing where to go with art, too.  Some years I’ve had a serious plan in place and have spent quite some time creating themed studies.  Other years, I fly by the seat of my pants.  This year, the invention of Pinterest has helped me fly by the seat of my pants more effectively!  lol  I “pin” great ideas as I find them and simply grab one of the ideas each week as I’m planning lessons.

You are welcome to check out my art pins to add to your own idea bank.  (Quite a lot of my art pins are located on other boards.  For example, I have several GREAT art lessons pinned to my Snow and Ice board for winter lessons.  So, in other words, you might browse around my boards a bit.)

You are also welcome to enjoy my artist and picture study themes.  There are a bunch of them!

Through Pinterest, I found (and archived) some fun leafy art lessons to go along with our botany studies this autumn.

While we didn’t get to all the wonderful ideas – this autumn – we found time for two of them.  The first was a lesson about layering oil pastels from Art Projects for Kids.

And the second was a fun shaving cream transfer painting from Little Wonder’s Days.

Speaking of botany, the last couple of weeks have been full of wonderful botany related field trips.

At Hallway Feeds, we were able to view the creation of specialized animal feed from start to finish.  What an amazing and utterly detailed process.  The kids were even allowed to EAT some of the feed!

At Color Point Nursery, we walked through state-of-the-art greenhouses and learned the process of growing and shipping plants on a very large scale.  At the time, there were 600,000 poinsettias set to ship out soon.  This place was huge!

I’ve lived in Kentucky my entire life and have never been to Churchill Downs.  My father-in-law owns a thoroughbred racehorse that happened to be racing at Churchill Downs last week.  Even though “our” horse came in 6th, we had a great time taking in all the sites and sounds – which can certainly count toward biology hours, right?

Enjoy your Thanksgiving week!

Thanks to Tricia (and Nana) from Hodgepodge, we had a wonderful art lesson this week!

Apples, pumpkins and autumn leaves were our subjects as we learned how to effectively use pastels.  It’s such an easy art project that results in beautiful artwork!

Check out Tricia’s tutorials for the step-by-step how-to’s…

Apples and Pumpkins

Autumn Leaves

I love incorporating math with other subjects.  In this simple activity, math and art come together to make a pretty spectacular finished product.

• Use watercolors to make whatever design you like on card stock.
• On the back of the dried artwork, use a ruler to make a grid of one-inch blocks.
• Cut the blocks apart and mix the pieces up.
• Lay the blocks randomly on another piece of card stock to create an abstract picture.
• Glue the pieces down securely.

We didn't have carstock, so I substituted old folders. I would definitely plan to use cardstock next time for easier measuring.

Since math is part of the lesson, be precise in creating the grid and cutting the squares so the pieces fit together nicely in the final product.

Mahayla's fiished artwork.

Caleb's final artwork.

]]> http://ourjourneywestward.com/2011/10/abstract-art-and-living-math/feed/ 5 http://ourjourneywestward.com/2010/03/batik-class/ http://ourjourneywestward.com/2010/03/batik-class/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:13:25 +0000 Cindy http://ourjourneywestward.com/?p=2468 A local museum offers classes a few times a year that are always lots of fun!  The theme this time was butterfly batiks.  It was such a great springtime art project, I thought I’d share it with you.  I’ll take you through the steps below, but you’ll be looking at three different butterflies since I was snapping shots of all three of my children during the class.

1.  Cut out a symmetrical butterfly figure by folding a large piece of paper in half, cutting on the fold and opening again.  After observing photos of real butterflies, use oil pastels to color the butterfly heavily.  Leave some white space for the wax resist in the next step.

2.  Place the colored butterfly in a tub of water and crinkle it up.  Shake off the excess water and place the wet butterfly flat on a paper towel.  Paint watered down black tempera paint over the entire surface of the butterfly.

3.  Use a dry paper towel to blot over the painted butterfly to remove excess paint and water.  The result is a wax resist where the black paint clings to the paper, but not the oil pastels.

4.  Finally, paste the butterfly on a large piece of paper where your child has drawn a habitat.

Fun!  And a great extension to a nature study outing!

The artwork below was actually harder than it looks.  I asked the kids to use rulers to measure the desired sized blocks of color for the background.  The abstract pieces placed on top were folded, cut and opened so that each piece would be symmetrical.  (See, I hide math everywhere!)

Henri Matisse

Olga’s Gallery
Warning: There are many nudes!

Paintings We Studied

I chose these paintings by Matisse because we were studying erosion at the time during nature study.  Each of the paintings includes erosion of some sort.  We had fun looking for and drawing erosion during our nature walks.  These painting ideas and the nature walk ideas came from the Everchanging Erosion NaturExplorers unit.

Open Window

Luxembourg Gardens

La Moulade

The Bank

Lesson Ideas

KinderArt Lessons

Paper Collages

Mulit-Media Design

We’ve been so immersed in our 1900′s history studies, that Charles Russell took a bit of a back seat this month.  We did find the time to practice a little horse drawing, though.  Enjoy the resources below!

Charles Russell

About Charles Russell

Paintings We’re Studying

Innocent Allies

Doubtful Handshake

Drifters

Round-up on the Musselshell

Lesson Ideas

How to Draw a Horse

Drawing Horses

Seurat is such a fun artist to study!  His use of pointillism was the biggest topic during the month, which made for some fun art projects.  The painting above was an attempt at recreating an “Alfalfa” style painting (see below) with a mixture of strokes and styles.  After using many different tools to create pointillism, we greatly respect how long it must have taken Seurat to finish any of his works created strictly with dots!

Georges Seurat

Olga’s Gallery

Paintings We Studied

La Grande Jatte

The Circus

Cows in a Field

Alfalfa

Books We Read

Lesson Ideas

Pointillism Activity Ideas

KinderArt Pointillism

Art Exercises for Kids