The students continued working on implied textures with this Jasper Johns inspired painting project. The 3rd graders looked at the artwork of Jasper Johns and the many different ways he painted the American Flag. All of Jasper Johns's American Flags had one thing in common: they all had textured surfaces. Johns layered news paper, wax, and paint in his paintings. The most noteworthy flag we looked at was a flag with reverse colors. The students looked at this flag for half a minute without looking away. When looking at a white wall, the rods and cones in their eyes adjusted to the visual change by showing each student a ghost image of the reverse of the colors they saw in the Jasper Johns flag, which was the red, white and blue of our real American Flag. The students were really blown away by this trick and wanted to try it again before moving onto making the actual art project.
To begin making flags with textured surfaces, the students used glue sticks to glue down torn pieces of news paper onto three different pieces of paper: two large pieces of paper and one small paper. Before painting their papers, they planned out which colors they wanted to use and where by coloring on Flag coloring sheets. When it was time to paint, I set up stations around the room of watered down tempera paint that they moved to. The watered down paint allowed for the details of the news papers to show through. When the painting was done, each student was left with three papers of different colors. For additional implied textures, the students gave the paper a scuffed, scratched look by dipping small squares of cardboard into gray paint and scraping it across their three papers. Once the implied texture of their papers was complete, they were ready to move onto cutting and gluing the pieces of the flag together. In order to save time, I used my cutting board to cut the students large papers into stripes to be used in their flag. The students used hot glue for the first time to glue down their stripes onto one of their painted papers. I supervised closely with this step in order to prevent students from burning their fingers. They glued down the small rectangular paper last, on top of the stripes. What resulted was an American flag without stars. On the last day, the students took turns using star stamps to finish off their Jasper Johns inspired pictures.
To begin making flags with textured surfaces, the students used glue sticks to glue down torn pieces of news paper onto three different pieces of paper: two large pieces of paper and one small paper. Before painting their papers, they planned out which colors they wanted to use and where by coloring on Flag coloring sheets. When it was time to paint, I set up stations around the room of watered down tempera paint that they moved to. The watered down paint allowed for the details of the news papers to show through. When the painting was done, each student was left with three papers of different colors. For additional implied textures, the students gave the paper a scuffed, scratched look by dipping small squares of cardboard into gray paint and scraping it across their three papers. Once the implied texture of their papers was complete, they were ready to move onto cutting and gluing the pieces of the flag together. In order to save time, I used my cutting board to cut the students large papers into stripes to be used in their flag. The students used hot glue for the first time to glue down their stripes onto one of their painted papers. I supervised closely with this step in order to prevent students from burning their fingers. They glued down the small rectangular paper last, on top of the stripes. What resulted was an American flag without stars. On the last day, the students took turns using star stamps to finish off their Jasper Johns inspired pictures.