Tami Edson
Subject: Visual Art
Grade Level: 3-5 grade
Lesson Duration: 1 hour and 15 minutes

Lesson Topic: Visual arts lesson featuring individual tissue paintings that are constructed by students and emphasizes color blending.

Rationale: The visual arts offer aesthetic, perceptual, creative and intellectual dimensions. Creating and constructing these tissue paintings fosters students' abilities to create, analyze, reorganize, and critique. This will also encourage students to explore and create with new colors.

Objectives:

Artistic Perception: Each student will pencil sketch a drawing and color it in with tissue pieces.

Creative Expression: Each student will design a unique tissue painting by filling in the sketch with selected colored tissue paper and its placement.

Aesthetic Valuing: In pairs, students will discuss and compare differences and similarities between the completed pieces to appreciate their peers' art as well as their own art work.

Strategy: Direct Instruction and Guided Discovery

Vocabulary:
color- pigment or paint that imparts a hue
blending- mixing two or more colors together to create a new color
sketching- a brief, light, or general account or presentation, an outline

Procedures:
Introduction: I will ask an initial question: How many colors can we make from the colors we have here? (While showing the available tissue colors)
1. The teacher will then demonstrate by either combining two colors on chalkboard, dry erase board, overhead, or piece of paper by using two colors to create a third color. Students will be asked if they can determine what new colors are formed by combining two other colors. Then the teacher will demonstrate how it will work the same way when using different colors of tissue papers

2. The teacher will ask if the students could create a new color by adding a different color to the existing blend. The students should understand that mixing two or more colors creates new pigments.

3. After the general discussion on blending colors, the teacher will show some professional examples of paintings and let them discover through guided discovery how these artists have used a variety of colors to create their art pieces.

4. If students aren't already familiar with modge-podge, the teacher will demonstrate the procedures involved.

Pupil Activity Sequence:
1. The students will sketch out a drawing that will need to be colored in with a variety of different colors.

2. After the sketches are done, have students make sure the lines are dark enough so as they can see their sketches through the wet tissue papers.

3. The students will then tear small pieces of tissue papers and paint on individual pieces at a time with a modge-podge mixture previously made by the teacher. The students will be adding, combining, or taking away pieces of tissue as they wish while creating and experimenting with the different possibilities. They will do this until their piece is completed with color. The tearing of the tissue paper allow the colors to blend more naturally than a cut edge.

4. As the students finish, have them put their paintings in a designated area for drying, then start on the clean-up process.

Closure: When all students have completed his/her painting, have the students observe each other's pictures in pairs while comparing and contrasting the similarities and differences of the pictures. They will reflect/discuss on the process of what worked well and what did not.

Clean-Up: 10 minutes. One person per group is designated to collect and clean brushes and another to collect and clean the bowls. Another is selected to clean up remaining tissue pieces from group. While the last person will wipe down the desks with wet paper towels after the desks are cleared.

Evaluation: The teacher will visually check for completed art pieces and for use of color blending with tissue paper. The teacher will listen to the closure procedures to check for understanding and reflections of classmates' art work regarding similarities and differences in color choices, shapes and process.

Materials:
1. Large white paper.
2. Paint brushes- handed out while students are sketching.
3. Modge-podge, water, bowls- the mixture will be prepared and handed out while students are sketching, or previously during recess.
4. Various colored tissue papers- students collect as they finish their sketches.
5. Pencils- students may have their own at desks already.

Reference: This idea was provided in Art 207 at Chico State with Professor Smith, Art Department.