Colour Schemes

In both Grade 5 and Grade 6 I have recently decided to work on colour schemes.  In Grade 5 I only focused on complimentary colours and monochramatic colours.  For their project, I simply had them choose one of the schemes, and make an abstract shape drawing.  This project took most students two, 1-hour periods to finish.  I highly recommend this project for two reasons: 1) A great bulletin board display!, 2) No prep and even a great filler if you need a quick art project!.

Here are the results:

Complimentary Colours - Blue and Orange

Complimentary Colours - Purple and Yellow

Complimentary Colours - Green and Red

Monochromatic - Orange

Monochromatic - Blue

For the Grade 6's I made the study of colour schemes a much bigger project.  The reason for this, is simply because Grade 6's focus for art this year is colour, whereas, Grade 5's focus is shape.  

The Grade 6's learned about the following colour schemes: monochromatic, complimentary, tertiary (only secondary colours or only primary colours), and analogous (closest shades/tints of colour on colour wheel) colours.  I began with having the students draw any picture they wanted on a big piece of paper, making sure they knew that there had to be detail in all areas of the paper.  They then had to fold the paper into quadrants. Each quadrant was going to be a different colour scheme.  I went through each quadrant slowly with the students so that they would truly understand the different colour schemes.  This was the first of two projects worked on for exploring colour schemes.

Here are some results:

Their second project was to take one of the four colour schemes and make an abstract watercolour painting with shapes, using that colour scheme only.

Here are some of those results:

Analogous 

Monochromatic

My favourite project of the three are definitely the watercolour paintings!  It was a great project to help students grow in their skills of mixing and blending colours with watercolour paints.  I am excited to brighten the art room with these paintings!  

Feel free to use any ideas, but please do leave a comment if you do!