First Day In Art Class- "Painted Papers"

- August 24, 2021

Hi everyone!

It has been a while since I have written a blog post.

Since my last post:

-I've bought a house.

-Graduated from grad school.

-Had a baby.

and as we all are--- currently surviving a pandemic.

But I am excited for the new school year, nonetheless. With the start of another school year comes the dread of creating a fun and engaging lesson for the first visit. I don't know about you, but I always have a hard time coming up with something interesting. This year I stuck with something simple yet fun.

I teach upper elementary, so each grade level did the exact same lesson-- Kwik Stix "Painted papers" using Analogous colors.

I always start my first visit to art with my rules and expecations video. Back when Bitmojis were a hit in the classroom, I made a video explaining the rules of the art room. Its only 5 minutes, keeps the kids' attention, and I don't have to say the same thing one million times--at two schools.

Next, we reviewed analogous colors. Here is the Analogous Colors slideshow I created and used. Hope this helps!

We talked about the definition of analogous colors, found analogous colors on the color wheel, and discussed how we could use different textures to create "textured painted papers".

As a demonstration for each class, I chose a set of analogous colors using kwik stix and a texture.

I demonstrated how I wanted to FILL THE PAPER and eliminate as much white space as possible in the background in order to have a very vibrant painted paper.

I showed students examples of "painted papers" that were full of white spaces and others that had very little white space. This seemed to help the students create very vibrant papers.

Of course we had a few friends who DID NOT use analogous colors (rebels lol) but they turned out absolutely amazing anyway!

You may be wondering--- how are you going to use these?

Well- these will be cut into smaller pieces and used as collage papers. I told students this as well. We did not write our name and class codes on the back of these because it was a collective project to "refresh" our collage baskets. For those classes that groaned because they wanted to take their art with them were given the option to make an extra one to take home. Everyone left happy and I have a ton of colorful papers to use for upcoming lessons!

Nonetheless, I hope that this lesson is as fun and simple for you as it was for me. Let me know how it went in the comments below. Don't forget-- you can always reach out to me @thebusybrushes on IG for more content like this! Happy Art Making and I hope you have a fantastic school year.