Kaleidoscope Eyes

The grade 9 art class is busy, working on their new project that is helping them learn about colour theory, painting techniques, and math.  "Kaleidoscope Eyes" is a new project that allows all students to contribute their design to a larger project that will be displayed in the new year.

To begin, students learned some theory by creating colour wheels that helped them identify primary, secondary and tertiary colours.  They also learned a bit about mixing and brush techniques.

After this, the class was introduced to a video about colour theory that also helped them learn about a few colour plans:

The colour plans that we are paying the most attention to are: 

1. Monochromatic:  ONE COLOUR, plus its tints and shades
2. Analagous:  THREE or FOUR COLOURS side-by-side on the colour wheel
3. Complementary:  TWO COLOURS directly across from each other on the colour wheel

The class decided to create paintings of their eyes (which involved plenty of fun 'selfies').  Usually, everyone would be able to decide the size of their paper, but because we are creating a display that will need everyone's painting to be the same size, we are all using the same size of paper to draw our eye designs.

Steps:

1. Use pencil to lightly sketch a large drawing of your eye on paper (we have nice, thick paper in class).
2. Divide the pupil & iris area into sections (minimum four).  This is where math comes in very handy! You can use a protractor to divide your circle into segments. Use angles to give you equally-spaced sections.

3. Design one section with a variety of lines, shapes and spaces.  

Some ideas to help you with your design:  

• "Let's Bring on the Snow" (ideas from Tricia Fuglestad's class)
• Kaleidoscope App

4. Repeat the design on the remaining segments to create a pattern.  **Look at these beautiful patterns below for inspiration:  (details from former student artworks!)

No, you do not need a figure or object in the middle of your artwork!

5. Your eye will begin to make a pattern...

6. When you are done designing all the sections, you will need to decide which COLOUR PLAN you want to use to paint with.  **Remember:  you can use a variety of tints and shades with each colour you select!  (We will review this concept in class)

**I'm looking forward to how our project will look when it's all done!  We may not get to complete the painting stage before Christmas holidays, but we can continue painting when we come back in January. :)