Trends Modern Art

Finally, another female artist! Sonia Delaunay is the wife of Abstract painter Robert Delaunay and interestingly enough, their work is fairly similar in style. Throughout her career, she explored the concepts of geometric abstraction and Orphism. I thought this would be a great way to introduce repetitive shapes, using a compass and a ruler, and coloring with markers. Everybody loves markers!

At least they do in my house.

We had fun with these markers because I bought a few scented markers in the mix. So throughout the entire class, we were sniffing marker tips--which I only recommend if they are non-toxic, of course.
"Oooh, this is root beer!"
"This smells like chocolate."
"Blueberry!"
"Mmmm, cherry!"
and
"Ew, this smells like window cleaner."

• I bought several inexpensive compasses and rulers and passed them out to the students. They also got a 9 X 12 piece of drawing paper.
• Make sure to instruct your students how to use a compass, and make sure they don't poke huge holes in their paper.
• I brought several packages of Crayola washable markers because they had so many rich, color options and they flowed smoothly.
• After showing the students some of Delaunay's work and they were sufficiently inspired, we got down to drawing.
• The students were instructed to use the compass so they could draw circles of various sizes, careful not to overlap the shapes.
• After they were finished laying out their circles, they used a flat ruler to dissect their drawing.
• And then it's time to get to coloring! Instruct students to use the same color in at least two other places so there can be some sort of cohesiveness in the design and color scheme.
• Give the children tips on how to color with the markers, taking care to use the tip only when doing an outline. Teach them to color by using the sides of the marker, which makes it look more neat and smooth. Then you don't injure the tip of the marker.
• A big plus to using Crayola markers was there was literally no smell. I love Sharpies as much as the next person, but they stink up the classroom to high heaven.

This was a nice change of pace. We will definitely be using markers for our projects again.

The artwork above was created by my 8-year old son.