Template magic.

Template magic. These mouth-watering watercolor paintings of fruit were madepossible with the use of templates. When I decided to attempt--yetagain--to pull some dynamic paintings from my fourth- and fifth-graders,I first had to ask myself a few serious questions: (1) What do I reallywant students to achieve in these paintings? Answer: Color blending,shading, highlights, variety and contrast. (2) What must I expect ofstudents' drawings in order to facilitate the previously mentionedcriteria? Answer: Forms that are large enough to contain a gradient ofat least two colors, forms that overlap and a full composition. (3) Howcan I get all students on, literally, the same page? Answer: Templates. Templates worked for us on so many levels. First, they helped toequalize e��qual��ize?v. e��qual��ized, e��qual��iz��ing, e��qual��iz��esv.tr.1. To make equal: equalized the responsibilities of the staff members.2. To make uniform. the playing field. In our district, students do not have artuntil they reach the fourth grade. Therefore, I have artists rangingfrom the student who spends 30 minutes meticulously drawing the"perfect" apple to the one who will spend 10 minutes, at best,to draw what appears to be a sprinkling of a few shriveled shriv��el?intr. & tr.v. shriv��eled or shriv��elled, shriv��el��ing or shriv��el��ling, shriv��els1. To become or make shrunken and wrinkled, often by drying: raisins andproclaim pro��claim?tr.v. pro��claimed, pro��claim��ing, pro��claims1. To announce officially and publicly; declare. See Synonyms at announce.2. , "I'm done!" Templates also shaved about 30 minutes off of our planning/drawingtime. And yes, I do believe that it is important for students to drawfreehand See Macromedia FreeHand. , but the emphasis today was to be on painting. I simply toldthe students, "You have 10 minutes before we stop and I will showyon how to blend some colors." I found that once I made the drawingelement less taxing, the students had so much more left to give to theirpainting. Thirdly, all students were able to compose these wonderfully uniquepaintings, which included spatial relationships like I had never seen intheir work before. The compositions were full and balanced. Theyoverlapped properly. The space was layered; with fruit actually in the bowls, ontabletops and spaced appropriately in regard to vertical placement. Allof this after only a 3-minute demo with the templates! I felt it wascrucial to provide each grouping of students with variety of bowl,bottle and fruit shapes. Once the drawings were clone, we looked at real fruit and discussedthe variety of color not of the white race; - commonly meaning, esp. in the United States, of negro blood, pure or mixed.See also: Color in each. We noted that the fruit often turnedcolors at different stages and could even become bruised. Students weregiven charts to illustrate a few "color families" and I showedthem how to pre-wet small areas and blend colors from the yellow-greencolor family. At first I limited the students to only painting with thiscolor family because I felt that it was the easiest with which to work.The students focused their attention on grapes, apples, lemons, bananas,bottles and so on. I found that the students were better able to understand thecolor-mixing process if we concentrated on only one color family at atime, so I allowed them to work for quite a while before progressing tothe red color family. I emphasized that many fruit had areas that couldbe yellow-green and red as well, but they should be careful not to mixgreen and red together. Finally, I showed them how to shade with blue orpurple and gave them the "go-ahead" on filling the background.The paintings were then outlined with pen and ink executed or done with a pen and ink; as, a pen and ink sketch s>.See also: Pen to give a little punchand a loose look. These mouth-watering, dynamic paintings made both me and mystudents proud. * LEARNING OBJECTIVES Students will ... * establish foreground-background relationship by placement offorms. * use watercolors to create two- and three-color analogous blends. * create contrast through manipulation of hue, shade and intensity. MATERIALS * 12" x 18" white paper * Large cake-tempera (or watercolor) paint * Templates (teacher makes ahead of time) * Large brushees (1/2-inch to 1-inch) * Small watercolor brushes * Pen and ink sets * Bowls of fruit David Laux teaches art to grades 4-6 at Wilson Intermediate School,Pekin Pekin(pē`kĭn), city (1990 pop. 32,254), seat of Tazewell co., central Ill., a port on the Illinois River; inc. 1839. A processing, rail, and shipping point in a grain, livestock, and dairying area, Pekin has a large food industry. , Ill.