Long after our in-house art show is over, our online gallery continues to display new artwork. Today, three new projects have been uploaded to Artsonia.
Abstraction:
For this project, students divided the 2 dimensional paper plane of a still life using an abstraction technique called Contour Continuation. Once divided, they filled the positive space with warm or cool colors and the negative space with the opposite family of colors. These are painted with watercolor. The abstraction gallery is at this link.
Digital Abstraction:
Once the watercolor abstractions were complete, some students had a chance to extend their learning to create artwork on their iPad using the same technique for abstraction, and incorporating layers, outlining, and flood fill in the Sketchbook Express app. The Digital Abstraction gallery can be found here.
Notan:
Fifth grade students have been working with Abstraction as well, using a technique called “Painting with Scissors”, which is a term coined by artist Henri Matisse (there is an amazing show of Matisse work at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts right now). We also explored the Japanese concept of Notan, which is the dynamic of Light and Dark (opposites, contrasts, etc) and positive space and negative space with this project. Students used scissors to cut both organic and geometric shapes out of paper and then glued the base on sheet of paper in a complementary color. The pieces that had been cut out were then flipped rather than turned or slid and placed around the perimeter of the base shape. This project is a great way to reinforce math concepts as well as make dazzling art.
Once the four required compositions were finished, students used the Pic Collage app on their iPads to create a four-square collage. This was saved to the camera roll and uploaded to Artsonia. The Notan gallery can be found at this link.