To begin, students developed an original design using twelve shapes. Next students learned about the color wheel: primary, secondary, and tertiary (intermediate) colors. Then students spent several weeks learning how to mix the three secondary and six tertiary color themselves. Once the paint was dry, students gave their painted shapes a sharpie black outline.
Next, students then learned about value; how light or dark something is. Shading with pencil is a common prior experience with value. Here, students learned two new drawing techniques, hatching and cross-hatching to create value with pens and sharpie markers. Spacing of the hatching lines is a huge factor in creating different values, the wider the spacing the lighter the value, the closer the spacing gets the darker the value.
Students then divided the background up into shapes.
Next, to create a sense of contrast, students began applying the hatching in the background.
To finish, students were challenged to create a variety of values: light, medium, and dark. As always, students were also challenged to consider their composition and to balance the values evenly around the background.