Grade 6 Patterned Tree Designs

6th Grade Patterned Tree Designs

I found inspiration for this lesson on Pinterest. The pictures were by T. R. Mack and Amy Giacomelli. They both have an Etsy shop site. 

    

          T. R. Mack                    Amy Giacomelli 

I first discussed value and demonstrated blending colors. They were to choose monochromatic  or analogous colors for their backgrounds. The darkest of the colors would be at the top slowly changing to the lightest at the bottom. Once painted and dried, they drew a simple stick figure tree in pencil. They then went over their drawing with black tempera paint to create a silhouette of a tree. I demonstrated how to thicken the tree and had them work upside down on this step because it seemed to help them work the trunk into each branch and paint downward with the brush instead of upward. The next step was to do a practice sheet of 2 color designs in oil pastel on white paper; either swirls or circles. They needed at least 5 combinations of colors varying from dark to light. They would then start adding them to their landscape in layers (darkest to lightest) from the top of the sky, middle of the sky, to the bottom of the sky. They chose contrasting color combination for the foreground and tree branches. Last we added gold paint to show what direction light was coming from. Here a the results: