Middle School Art Class

I saw a post on Getting My Art Wings Back (http://myartwings.blogspot.com/2012/12/grade-6-patterned-tree-designs.html) about patterned tree designs and I thought I would try this with my middle school class. So far this semester we have talked a little about color theory - primary, secondary, complimentary and autologous colors. We've talked about tints (adding white) and shades (adding black. They've worked with acrylic and watercolors so far as well as doing weekly pencil drawings in their own sketchbooks. This lesson seemed to tie in a lot of the color theory, the acrylic painting techniques and the simple drawings that we've been working on. I forgot to take photos during class (well, I was busy!). First I let them pick any color (except really light colors like yellow or aqua). They were to paint a gradient wash over the whole paper (12X18") from darkest on top down to lightest on bottom. They added black to their color for the darkest shades and decreased that until they were at mid paper where it was purely their chosen color. Then they added white to make tints of the color down to the bottom. We dried these and painted trees in black paint (we practice drawing different trees ahead of time). After drying the trees, they were given the choice of the complimentary color plus its autologous colors to make the spiral designs. The results were great and the students were all able to understand color theory a little better primarily because they were allowed to make choices and they were using the colors to make beautiful designs.