Periodic Table 1

Inspired by some art work by Kris Shanks (above) that I found on Flickr pertaining to the Periodic Table; the Periodic Table Print Making Project the Grade 7 is going to design their own Periodic Table. They will emulate the challenge that the printmaking artists on Flickr have taken and create their own images for the elements. Each student has been assigned to research an element for Science class. The end goal is to create a complete table that is a unique art piece and to get the students thinking about Science in a creative and dynamic way.

The students have been asked to research their element and to start sketching ideas of how to represent it in visual form. As a start in the design process they are creating three designs that are based on the Symbol and Atomic Number only. They are looking at font options and how to arrange the fonts within a square that is 15cm x 15cm in size. They will then colour their designs using only complementary colours.

7th Grade Homework (see Calendar for due dates)
In your Development Sketchbooks:
1. Explore different fonts for your Element's Symbol and Atomic Number using a word-processing program, choose 3 that you like, print them and put them in your sketchbooks.
2. Create 3 designs using your font research. Your designs will be square (15cm x 15cm), coloured in complementary colours and made using just the Symbol + Atomic Number.

Fingerprints 1

The Grade 6 is doing a Forensics unit in Science class and so their next art project is going to be a large painting of one of their own fingerprints. The students will paint using only 2 complementary colours + the shades and tints of those colours. These paintings will be a unique portrait of each student.

This week the students explored what a fingerprint is. Some of the words they used to define a fingerprint are: identity, visible, recordable, unique, incriminating, code, password, everywhere, skin, oil, useful, forensics, DNA, everybody has them and they are everywhere.

The students also experimented with how to record a fingerprint in their Development Sketchbooks. The three types of prints made were an ink print, an acrylic paint print and a cocoa and oil print. There were varying degrees of success but by far the most difficult one to "capture" was the cocoa and oil print.

6th Grade Homework (see the Calendar for due dates)
In your Development Sketchbooks research the following vocabulary for fingerprints: Arch, Loop, Whorl, Accidental, Composite. For each word write a definition in your own words and draw an example fingerprint. The size of your drawings can be quite small but 3cm x 3cm should be the smallest.

Complementary Colours

As a continuation to learning about Colour we talked about Complementary Colours this week. Complementary colours are the colours that are found directly opposite each other on the Colour Wheel.


So, for example, Yellow and Violet are a complementary pair, as are Red and Green, Blue and Orange. The students learned that the complement of a Primary colour is always a Secondary colour. They also discovered that all 3 primary colours (yellow, red, blue) are present in any 2 complementary colours. Let's take Yellow and Violet again, Yellow is a primary, Violet is made up of Red and Blue, thus all 3 primary colours are present. Using this idea the students were then able to deduce what a complement of a colour would be without looking at the colour wheel. If I asked them what the complement of Orange is they know that Red and Yellow make Orange, therefore Blue is its complement as it is the only remaining primary not named yet.

Colour Charts

Grade 6 and Grade 7 have completed colour charts to use as a reference for future painting assignments. Each student was asked to make a chart using only their Primary colours (Yellow, Red, Blue) + Black and White. These five colours are all they will be working with for their next painting project and so they were asked to create a chart representing the following Hues: Yellow, Orange, Red, Violet, Blue, Green, their Shades and Tints, as well as a Greyscale.

The aim of the exercise was to teach the students how to mix their own colours successfully while they got to know the properties of their particular brand of acrylics. It also showed them in a practical manner how to determine Value (the lightness or darkenss) and Intensity (the brightness or dullness) of a Hue.