Warholian Crayons

Grade 2/3:  Crayons, Complementary Colours, & Andy Warhol

I brought in a great big colour wheel, and we began to talk about complementary colours, and colours both hot and cool.

I find it is helpful to give the hot and cool colours some identifying action (and sound effects too).  Cool is a double snap of the fingers: “Snap! Snap!” – for when one is walkin’ down the street ever so cool.  Hot is a touch of a finger to the tongue and then to the side of the butt, with an accompanying “Sizzle” sound.  Ow – hot!

The kids enjoyed that.

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I talked a bit about Andy Warhol, using the classroom computer to find images of his Campbell soup cans:  shameless repetitions of an everyday, labelled item on a brilliant ground.

Then came the crayons, 10 brand new packages – crayons perfectly formed and ready for drawing.  Not to colour with, mind you – they were to draw the actual crayons, not once but four times.  Which meant that every square page supplied needed to be folded twice to form 4 squares.

With a crayon on their desk and pencils in their hands, they now had to draw that crayon, making a choice about how they were going to orient it (horizontal, diagonal, vertical), and observing the details.  I suggested that each square crayon be oriented the same way.  Look at the shape, look at the label – those two wiggly black stripes at either end, the letters ‘Crayola’.  Now, they had to do that three more times!  ‘Aaawww …”  (But they weren’t really disappointed – they just wanted to get to the colour)

After they outlined their line drawing with Sharpie markers (NOT the squares), they could colour their crayon using the pencil crayons.  To round out the lesson (and really make it pop), they needed to choose 2 sets of complementary colours and then fill in the backgrounds with corresponding markers.  Suddenly, the project was lookin’ gud!

Spring 2013 / Ferndale School