Radial Design Color Scheme Painting

For this painting, students first began with creating a symmetrical radial design.  Symmetrical mean it is the same on both sides, or in this case the same from side to side and from top to bottom.  Radial means it is based on a circle, and even though it is on square paper, the design moves your eye in a circular movement around the piece.

First, students folded their square paper in half (into a rectangle) and in half again (back to a smaller square).  From there students create four interesting (but not too complex) lines that will eventually become the entire design.  This is one quarter of the design.

 Then students folded the smaller square backwards and rubbed really hard.  This transfers the crayon lines faintly to the other small square.  Then they went through and retraced.  Now they have half of their design.

Then this process of folding and rubbing is repeated one more time, transferring one half to the other have, give the students their finished symmetrical radial design.

From there students had to select either an analogous or complementary color scheme to paint their design.  An analogous color scheme uses any three colors in a row on the color wheel (ex. yellow, yellow-green, and green).  A complementary color scheme uses two colors across from each other on the color wheel (ex. red/green, yellow/violet, or blue/orange).  Once painted, the final step was to retrace the outlines with black crayon one last time.

 The above example is an analogous color scheme painting using green, blue-green, and blue.  Notice the bottom half has been retraced, compared to the top half which has not.  There is am identifiable difference in the quality of the lines.

The above example is a complementary color scheme painting.  Complementary colors are called so because when placed next to each other, they make each other more intense and bold.  The opposite happens when they are mixed, they dull each others intensity.  If students selected this option, they would have had to mix them together at least once; in this example, they were mixed together in two different ways.  The lines in this example are also retraced completely.