Op Art

Op art is short for "optical art." The word optical is used to describe how we see. When artists create op art, they use shapes, colors and patterns to make their artwork look like its moving. Look at the image below. Looks like it is moving right? It is actually not moving at all! It's your eyes playing a trick on you! This is op art.

Here is another piece of op art. Some people call it an optical illusion. Does it look like it's moving?

Before we begin our op art project, let's practice first. I want you to draw a tall triangle on a piece of paper.

Now I want you to draw curved lines that look like smiles you would put on a smiley face. Make these curved lines go all the way down with space between them. I drew these lines in red so you can see them better.

Good job! Now I want you to draw another tall triangle. This time you should practice drawing curved lines that look like frowns on a sad face. I also did these in red so you can see them better.

Excellent! You are now ready to make your own op art! You can put your practice triangles away and take a new piece of paper. Let's start with a dot in the middle that you should draw with a pencil. If the dot isn't exactly in the middle that's okay.

Now you should draw 10 lines from that dot going towards the outside of the paper. If you do not have exactly 10 lines, that is okay but it has to be an even number. So if you end up having 8 lines or 12 lines, that works too.

Remember those smiles we practiced? We are now going to make them in our artwork. Pick any triangle you want and make those smiles going all the way down. Don't forget to leave space between them.

After you finish making smiles in that triangle, you are going to leave the triangle next to that one empty and then make smiles again in the one after that. You will keep making smiles in every other triangle. That means you are drawing smiles in one triangle, skipping the next one, drawing smiles in the next one, skipping the next and so on. As you are drawing in each triangle, you should be turning your paper so the triangle is always on the bottom of your paper. This way you are always drawing smiles. See my example below.

Great job so far! Now we are ready to draw in the empty triangles. Start with whatever empty triangle you want and this time you should draw curved lines that look like frowns. If you can, make these lines touch the smiles. I did this in red so you can see it better. Remember you should be turning your paper so the triangle you are drawing in is always on the bottom.

Now you should draw frowns in the rest of the empty triangles. I made these all red so you can see them better.

Ready to add color? Wonderful! We are going to color in our triangle with smiles first. Please choose a dark colored crayon and color in the first section of your triangle.

Now choose a light colored crayon and color in the next section.

We are going to continue coloring with a pattern. Remember a pattern is when you repeat something. For our op art we are going to repeat colors. In my example I colored my triangle purple, yellow, purple, yellow, purple, yellow.

Now you should continue coloring in the smiles with those same 2 colors of your pattern.

We are now ready to color in the triangles with frowns. Choose 2 different crayon colors for these. Use one light color and one dark color. Using these 2 crayons, color in one of the triangles with a pattern. For my example, I colored green, blue, green, blue, green, blue.

Now color the rest of the triangles using these same 2 colors in a pattern.

Make sure you check out the section "Fun Activities for Everyone"

for extra art activities