Collaborative Non-objective Geometric Design

Submitted by: Bunki Kramer, Los Cerros Middle School, Danville, California

(Bunki passed away in May, 2014)
Lesson: Round Robin Construction

Grade Level: Middle School

 

MATERIALS:

• Light-colored 12" x 18" (30.5 x 46 cm) Construction Paper (blues, greens, pinks, yellows)

• Compasses

• Drawing Pencils

• Rulers

• Right-angles, if possible

• Crayons (Colored Pencils - or soft lead pencils)

• Pictures by Braque, Picasso, Leger,etc.

• Overhead pictures and overhead

OBJECTIVES:

• Students work cooperatively to create a non-objective geometric design building on the work of others

• Students show value gradation through change of pressure in shading

• Student show awareness of cubism

DIRECTIONS:

Start with drawing tools. In this project each student in the class is instructed to execute a particular construction and then pass his/her paper to the right. The process is repeated several times. Students then are instructed to take the original papers and embellish them so they become more balanced in line and shape. We spend several minutes discussing balance.

 

Possible instructions:

• Make four dots. Pass

• Make circles on dots any size with compass. Pass

• Make one equilateral triangle. Pass



• Make two right angles and extend to outside edges. Pass

• Make three parallel lines and extend to edge. Pass

• Make two perpendicular lines. Pass

• Make one acute triangle and one obtuse triangle.

• Return to original person. Embellish.

Show example how to color "cubistically" with Crayons (Colored Pencils or soft lead Drawing Pencils- gray scale only). (If you look at several cubistic paintings, you will notice the similar brushwork where each section of color is painted dark in one corner and spreads to the other corners while getting lighter in shade.) Do not outline but color up to the pencil lines. Balance colors in composition.

 

Prints

• Guernica by Pablo Picasso
• The Couple by Picasso
• Violin and Grapes by Picasso
• Le Gueridon by Georges Braque
• Big Julie, by Fernand Leger

DVD's: Picasso's Cubism, Picasso: The Man and His Work - Part 1 and Part 2, Picasso: War, Peace, Love [VHS], Picasso: A Film by Didier Baussy-Oulianoff

 

Other possibilities:

Paint with black and white only. Mix to make different. shades of gray. Discuss values of black and white together.

 

Paint with only two primary colors. Mix to make secondary and tertiary colors.

Do color mixing with crayon.