Color Wheel Mandalas

Students in Art Attack painted color wheels for their first project. We focused on creating designs with radial symmetry and paint mixing to learn about hue, tint, shade, and tone.

We started out learning about the color wheel and color families. Then, we got to work using MATH! Well, we know there are 6 spaces on a basic color wheel and we need to divide our circle into equal parts.....sooooooo, how many degrees must each section be? (Insert student sighs) Ooh, wait a hand goes up....60 degrees?? YES!!! Look at all that practical math application happenin'. So then we broke out the rulers, protractors and compasses and got to measuring and designing our mandalas. We used the windows outside the art room and light tables to help us transfer our designs into each section.

With our designs ready, it's time to paint. Students were provided with only primary colors, white, and black.

After 4 classes, students were finally ready for finishing touches. They retraced their lines in Sharpie marker, cut out their painting, and mounted it on black paper to make the colors really pop. Check out their beautiful works of art!

Students used a variety of ceramics techniques to build a tower representing a theme. We started by gathering reference images and creating a sketch. Then, students learned about slab construction by creating a slab cylinder or prism using the score and slip technique to attach pieces together. Most of our time was spent then adding and carving away pieces to really create enough detail to represent a theme.

After construction, the clay pieces were left to dry for at least a week and then fired in the kiln. Students then added watercolor to the bisque clay and sealed it with varnish.

This project started out by learning about proportions, specifically the proportions of the human body. We viewed examples of body proportions and practiced drawing poseable mannequins together, fitting each body part into the correct amount of space. After one day of this, our next class, students created a composition inspired by artist Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, in which they drew several figures moving through space capturing an action or movement.

To add color, students had a choice of crayons, colored pencil sticks, or oil pastels. We practiced value and defining a clear light source. Finally, we filled the white space by layering bleeding tissue paper in contrasting colors.