Non-Objective Pattern Sculptures with Sol Lewitt

Lesson Objective:  

Work with the elements of line and space 

Work with the art principles of pattern and unity

Create a 3-D composition

Use paper Construction

Key Vocabulary: 

Non-objective sculture

Free standing Sculpture

Unity

Materials: 

Note Cards in two sizes

Glue

Black Card stock base

Fine point black sharpies

Focus Artist: Sol Lewitt: Pattern and structures 

Also study: Revisit:  Dongo Artwork to review and connect. 

Project requirements: 

Drawing is non-objective and shows attention to detail

Drawings incorporate 20 different patterns 

Small Group Critique at Midway point

Sculpture is free standing and non-objective

Shows unity through repetition of color and shape. 

Assessment:

Informal: Small Group Critique

Formal: Final Grading

CA Art Standards

1.1 Identify and use the principles of design to discuss, analyze, and write about visual aspects in the environment and in works of art, including their own.

1.4 Analyze and describe how the composition of a work of art is affected by the use of a particular principle of design.

2.1 Solve a visual arts problem that involves the effective use of the elements of art and the principles of design.

2.2 Prepare a portfolio of original two-and three-dimensional works of art that reflects refined craftsmanship and technical skills.

Modifications: 

English Language Learner: Handout for project, project samples, Power point with visuals, Critique for additional understanding, Demonstration of techniques

Special Needs: Handout for project, project samples, Power point with visuals, Critique for additional understanding, Demonstration of techniques

Accelerated Learner: Expand on skills learned to create a unique project. 

Advanced art students will be asked to increase the difficulty of their pattern making and increase the final number of  paper rolls from 20 to 30. 

Scaffolding adaptations: 

Students will see several examples of each art element in different artwork shown in the power point. Notes on the elements of art will be taken throughout discussions for added understanding. Creating each side and Constructing the cube will be demo started in class using guided instruction. 

Day 1: 

Go Through Power Point Slides

Review: Dango Artwork to connect learning

Discuss Sol Lewitt’s artwork

Interpret line drawings as Principles and elements of design

State Project Objectives, Materials, Project Requirements, Due Dates

Plan ideas for patterns 

Day 2-4: Students will create 20 different patterns on 1/2 index cards

Day 3: Art Link: Peer Critique feedback on cards 

Focus on Line and pattern

Day 4: 

Art Link: Have students draw their ideas for construction

Roll 5 Cards to begin construction on Day 5

Day 5-8: Students will roll and construct sculptures. 

Day 6: Peer critique on cards and sculpture progress. 

Continue making cards throughout. 

Students who work quickly could be asked to create additional patterns on Cards

Students who work slowly will be checked-on regularly with possible adaptations of fewer then 20 notecards. 

Last Day of Sculpture: 

Art Link: Self Critique: 

Describe, Analyze, Interpret and Evaluate. Draw on your notes and the rubric to complete for 10 points. 

Complete Rubric and turn in sculpture. 

Evaluation: successful for all engaged students and all abilities of students. Wonderful outcome

20 pattern minimum is accomplishable in the 3 days of studio time. 

Texture Printmaking with Wayne Thiebaud

Discussion: 

What is texture? 

How does your hair feel?

How does the bottom of your show feel?

Do they feel the same?

What about tree bark vs. A puppy? 

Art and texture: 

The job of an artist is to create visual texture

A dog might look fluffy and a marble would be shiny and smooth

Printmaking: do you print things at home? 

How do you print them?

How do we print in art: smash pictures or folding pictures in half

There are many techniques in art for printmaking

Mono-print: creating one print from an original piece of art

Look at Wayne Thiebaud’s Gum ball machine painting and discuss how he might have drawn it. 

ARTIST: Wayne Thiebaud 

(born November 15, 1920) 

He is an American painter 

His most famous works are of cakes, pastries, boots, toys and lipsticks. 

He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture,

although his works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate the works of the classic pop artists. 

Thiebaud uses heavy pigment and exaggerated colors to depict his subjects

well-defined shadows characteristic of advertisements are almost always included in his work.

Project: Create mono-print gum ball machine from sand paper

Step1: on your 4x6 piece of sand paper: with a black oil pastel, draw a large circle on the top half

Step2: Draw a square underneath your circle

Step3: add a half circle on top of your first circle

Step4: add a small circle inside your square

Step5: color in your square and small half circle with the same color

Step6: color in your small circle black to show where the gum balls come out

Step7: fill your machine with different colored gum balls

Step8: once complete, adult uses an iron to melt picture onto your tag board paper

Note: These come out like a print, they might not be exact. 

MATERIALS: 

Oil pastels

Sand paper (light)

Iron

Heavy card stock or tag board paper

I loved the addition of the 25 cents but you might warn young students that it will print backwards. 

Facial Proportion with Romare Bearden

Discussion

Facial Proportion

Colors

warm and cool colors

complementary colors

neutral colors

Shape

collage

artist, Romare Bearden

His piece Mother and Child, 1968

on display at the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA

ARTIST: Romare Bearden, (1911-1988)

American, Collage 

• Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and died in New York City at the age of 76. 

• His life and art are marked by exceptional talent, encompassing a broad range of intellectual and scholarly interests, including music, performing arts, history, literature and world art. 

• Bearden was also a celebrated humanist, as demonstrated by his lifelong support of young, emerging artists.

• Recognized as one of the most creative and original visual artists of the twentieth century

• He experimented with many different mediums and artistic styles, but is best known for his richly textured collages, two of which appeared on the covers of Fortune and Time magazines, in 1968. 

• An innovative artist with diverse interests, Bearden also designed costumes and sets for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and programs, sets and designs for Nanette Bearden's Contemporary Dance Theatre.

Facial Proportion: The face extends from the top of the head to your chin

This puts your eyes right in the Center of your face

The bottom of your nose falls in the Center of your eyes and chin

Your mouth is in the Center between your bottom of the nose and your chin

Let’s try this with newspaper

Step1: cut out a circle roughly the size of your hand from newspaper

Step2: fold your circle in half and cut out two ovals (eyes)

Step 3: fold your “chin” to your eye fold

Step 4: cut out a small triangle or circle

Step5: fold your “chin” to your nose fold

Step6: cut out a long oval for a mouth shape

Project: 

Step1: glue down your newspaper face to the card stock on the top and slightly right

Step2: Cut out a strip of newspaper and glue it along the bottom of your page

Step3: using yellow add some hair. This could be thickly applied

Step4: using your first complementary color add shape somewhere on your page

Step5: using the second complementary color fill in the background

• first: go around the shape
• second: paint over the newspaper strip but make sure you can see some of the newspaper through the paint
• third: fill the page with the color

Step6: mix your two complementary colors on your plate

Step7: somewhere on your painting add a neutral shape

Materials: 

paint in complementary colors

newspaper

glue sticks

Scissors

paper plates or trays for paint

paint brushes

water 

Imagination "Outrigger" Paintings with Robert Hudson

Robert Hudson's

Outrigger is on display at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA

Discussion: Find this sculpture in the museum and sit for discussion

What do you see here?

Is it an animal

How is it different from the painting we have seen?

Do you think the other side is painted or is it blank?

How many animals do you see?

What two different items are on top?

Why antlers? What is the artist trying to say? (NO WRONG ANSWERS)

How does the artist use color? Value?

ARTIST: Robert Hudson (born 1938) is an American artist who was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and grew up in Richland, Washington. He received a B.F.A in 1961 and an M.F.A. in 1963, both from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Hudson is best known for his funk art assemblages, of the late 1950s and 1960s. He has also produced non-objective paintings, ceramics and large steel and bronze sculptures.

Project: inspired painting of or inspired by this piece of art

Step1: draw the most important two things that you saw in the sculpture

Step2: draw two things that you would add to the sculpture, if it was yours, to improve it.

Step3: Draw two shapes, one organic, one geometric into the painting 

Step5: balance one shape on two sides

Step6: add a base

Step7: add one additional item of your choice, hat?

Step 8: using primary and secondary colors, paint your version of “outrigger”

MATERIALS: 

Paint

Paper

imagination

Line Mammals with Victor Vasarely

(because we are beginning a new school year I included my first day introductions)

Introduction: 

I am Mrs Mollie

Let’s talk about art

what is art?

where do we see it?

what should we talk about when we look at it?

color, shape, line, texture, value, hear, see, smell, 

Is Art right and wrong?

mistakes in art: good or bad?

One Rule: do not comment on your neighbors artwork.  

Discussion:

Line: what is a line?

Where do we see lines

what do lines do in art?

How many line scan you name  and where might we see them in life:

zig zag, swirl, straight, thin, thick diagonal, curves, wavy

Shapes: name a shape

how do lines make shapes?

Mammals: you have been talking about mammals in class

what are mammals

where do we see them?

might we see them in art?

show artwork of tangled black and white zebras. 

Victor Vasarely, (vah-zah-RAY-lee)

1906-1997

born Hungarian:

French artist: sculpture, painter printmaker 

He lead the development of the op art movement

Op-Art: an artistic style that uses geometric abstraction

Began painting in 1943

Style is characterized by BRIGHT VIBRANT COLORS geometric forms and suggestive movement

Style influeneced by KANDINSKY and KLEE

Zebra, created by Vasarely in the 1930s, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op-art. 

Vasarely died in Paris in 1997

PROJECT: Draw a mammal using shapes fill in with lines

Step1: Pick a mammal in your head and think about what shapes you could use to draw him

Step2: using a pencil, begin to draw your shape mammal

Step3: once completed fill in your shape mammal with spiral lines

Step4: Fill in your background using straight or zig zag lines

Materials:

card stock

sharpies

pencils

Collage Overlapping with Matisse

DISCUSSION: 

still life: group of object placed together in interesting ways

Perspective: near and far

Overlapping: one object covering a portion of another object

Look at Matisse’s work: "Red Interior: Still Life on a Blue Table," by Henri Matisse 45 5/8 by 35 inches, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, 1947

What colors does he choose

   Do they help tell the story

What about the lines he chooses 

What do we know about zig zag lines and the color red?

What story does it tell?

Can we tell what time of year or day it is?

What might it smell like

Do you have any other sensory reaction to the scene?

MATERIALS: 

Construction paper scrappys in all colors

9x12 construction paper for window frame

Glue

Watercolors

Paint brushes

Scissors

sheet of white card stock for our exterior (8x11)

ARTIST: Henri Matisse 

1869-1954
French Painter,
Studied law until he was 21

Mother gave him a paint box after surgery and he discovered painting

He returned to work, and every morning before work, he attended drawing classes; at lunch time he would paint for an hour or so, and then return to work. After work he would paint till night fell. It was his life. 

In 1891 set off for Paris. 

Matisse began his journey of studies which ultimately lead him to his love of line, shape and color. 

Matisse felt that his greatest influence had been the work of the artist Cezanne (1839 – 1906, French). 

In the 1950‘s, Matisse began creating paintings using paint and paper cut outs. 

In his last years, as he aged and fell ill, Matisse continued to paint, this time on the walls of his room, using a piece of charcoal attached to the end of a bamboo pole. He painted until his death in 1954. 

Matisse had strong feelings about only one thing, the act of painting. 

The purpose of these pictures, he always asserted, was to give pleasure. 

For Matisse, painting was the rhythmic arrangement of line and color on a flat plane. 

He had created the technique of striking contrasts, unmixed hues, flat planes of color (similar to Gauguin, 1848 – 1903, French) 

expressive brush strokes (similar to Van Gogh, 1853 – 1890, Dutch). 

Light was expressed, not in the method of the Impressionists, but with a harmony of intensely covered surfaces. 

For additional information please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Matisse

PROJECT:  Could take two weeks

Step 1: on your white card stock create a view from your window. Use weather from your favorite time of year

Step 2: set your painting aside for it to dry

Step 3: cut out a window frame from construction paper

Step 4: on a large piece of construction paper use marker to create wallpaper

Step 5: cut out a chair or table from construction paper

Step 6: cut out a pet or a vase of flowers from construction paper

Step 7: create a piece of fabric for your table or chair with markers and paper, cut it out

Step 8: cut out a piece of carpet from construction paper

Step 9: glue all of the objects on your page, create depth

Step 10: clean up