Friday, April 27, 2012

Mark Rothko: Color + Emotion


How delicious are the colors and compositions of these Mark Rothko inspired chalk pastel drawings!?


To introduce the links between color and emotions, we read the story "My Many Colored Days" by Dr. Seuss". We then made a mental list of all the emotions we had felt during the day (tired when we woke up, excited to be at school, happy hamburgers were for lunch, and so on). Whatever color we felt we drew.




Our next step was to talk about artists who use color to influence emotional responses from a viewer. Enter...Mark Rothko! 

Using chalk pastels on black construction paper we mixed and blended our Rothko inspired works. WOW! I'm still getting goose bumps, they turned out so stunning! I'm so proud!




10 comments:

  1. Wow! Love these Rothko inspired pieces. I'll have to try this. Thanks! :)

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  2. Beautiful effect. Colored poems!
    Ciao Luisa

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  3. Oh my gosh...these are AWESOME!

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  4. Amazing!!! I remember your post when you asked how to teach Rothko... The results are awesome!!!

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  5. Nicely done. I've never taught a Rothko based lesson, but this looks interesting - thanks!

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  6. These are amazing and inspiring. Rothko is a favorite in our household, and I'd love to try this with my firsties. Thank you!

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  7. I love these. You make my mouth water... In a good way. I miss art teaching so much when I see your stuff. Just chanced upon it but will be back!

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  8. Te felicito Katie! Que buenos trabajos, me han emocionado mucho!

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  9. Hi Katie! This lesson was so inspiring I'm doing it right now with my 1st graders. I was just wondering if you could give me some pointers on the logistics of this project. How did you instruct them to lay out their color fields? How did you manage the chalk pastels? Did you have them plan which colors they would use ahead of time? Thank you so much!!

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  10. Each rectangle has three different colors, one outline, one base, and one mixing (we talked about color mixing in a previous project). They used their fingers to smear within the rectangle, and we had damp rags at each table for them to wipe down their hands occasionally to control dust. I talk about teacher and student health with chalk dust and how its bad for our lungs to inhale, especially for the teacher over time. This helps prevent the manic students who push down really really hard. I also purchase 24 color count chalk pastels from blick. this helps give more color variety!

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