Grid Tree

using warm and cool colors

Warm vs. Cool Colors

• Warm colors include red, orange, and yellow. They bring a sense of energy and warmth to artwork and they tend to jump to the front of an art piece.
• Cool colors include blue, green, and purple, and they bring a sense of calm and cool to artwork. They tend to recede or fade away into the distance.
• Look at the famous paintings on the next slide and think about how the artist’s use of warm or cool colors affects the mood of the artwork - how you perceive what’s happening in the picture and how it makes you feel.

Today we are going to use warm and cool colors to make a fall themed tree. Notice that if you reverse the colors it gives the art a completely different feel.

Start with the template provided and using pencil draw two lines up toward the circle to make your tree trunk.

1

Add more branches around the circle to complete your tree. When you are happy with the shape of your tree, trace over the pencil with sharpie. Leave the inside of your tree blank for now.

2

Choose a color scheme for your tree and background - assign one part cool colors and one part warm.

Alternating shades of warm or cool tones (whichever you picked), color in your tree.

3

Artist Tip:

You can choose colors at random or have a pattern to your background boxes such as diagonal or striped

Choose a selection of colors for your ground (make sure they are the opposite of the tone you used for your tree) and color in the bottom rows of boxes.

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4

Select another group of colors the same tone as your ground and finish coloring the background of your tree.

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5

If you have time, add different designs or patterns to your tree trunk to create even more interest to your artwork.

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6

Sources

• Artprojectsforkids.org
• Afaithfulattempt.blogspot

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Materials

• 8.5x11 cardstock with grid printed
• Fine tip sharpie
• Crayons - mix of warm and cool colors