Pattern & Texture Paintings

Students in fifth and sixth grade explored making different kinds of brushstrokes to represent the variety of textures that surround us. Following their explorations, students created pattern paintings by planning their compositions, and filling their pages with patterns. They used white paint on a dark construction paper background to represent a scene or to create a design.

How might you create a smooth or rough texture with your brush?

Next, students added color to the negative spaces, by adding colors alongside the white lines. They looked at images of patterns in nature, as well as prints by the Finnish textile and fashion company, Marimekko.

Before creating their pattern paintings, students explored different ways of showing texture through lines and brushstrokes. They looked at objects from nature with rough and smooth textures. 

Students noticed the repeated lines and shapes in patterns, and they experimented with painting techniques by using the brush in different ways. Students discovered that they could the flat side, the skinny side or the tip of the brush to achieve different effects. 

Monochromatic Color Explorations

Students in fifth and sixth grade considered how one might use different shades of the same color to make something appear closer or farther away.

                                 

How might your use different shades of the same color to 

make something appear closer or farther away?

                                 

Students looked at different photographs and paintings of landscapes. They learned that atmospheric perspective describes the effect of objects being lighter as they get further away from you, and darker when they are closer.

They also noticed that details are clearer in the foreground than in the background. We discussed how landscapes can be organized into a foreground in the front, a middle ground, and a background. Students also looked different kinds of landscapes including imaginary ones. Next they sketched a landscape of their choice before painting it.

                                    

                       

                                 

Before creating their atmospheric paintings, students were challenged to mix as many different shades of the same color as they could. They learned to mix white, grey and black to their original color to make tints, shades and tones. Students also discovered that adding different amounts of the same colors can change your mixture.