Tuesday, January 31, 2012

chidi chidi bang bang

I introduced the kinders to the work of Nigerian artist Chidi Okoye this week. He has worked in a number of figurative abstract ways throughout his career. I thought the kids could have fun and gain practice using primary and secondary color paints by using a couple of his abstract figures as an inspiration.


We looked at the above image and identified shapes and colors we knew. I revisited the concepts of primary and secondary colors with them here. We also agreed that the body shape did not look real. Chidi made it simpler, getting rid of facial features, hands, feet, etc.


When we looked at this one we talked about his use of overlapping to make a front and a back in the painting. We also talked bout how this was a picture of people doing something together, which is one of the kinder art standards.

We drew the composition out together, using dots at the beginning to locate where the arms and legs would end. Then we traced our pencil lines in crayon.

We used prang tempera cakes with water to paint this project. It's the second time I have used these and I love them! The colors can be opaque or transparent and the clean up is so easy compared to using tempera in a bottle. Very little waste and if colors get dirty we can just sponge them clean.


I demonstrated how to use the cakes and how to clean brushes in between colors. I asked the students to paint shapes using the primary colors first and then to paint shapes using the secondary colors. If they had leftover shapes, students could repeat colors or use black and brown.

The kinders did a great job with this project. Their paintings came out very bright and intense and clean up was over in minutes:)









2 comments:

  1. I love these...especially the one on the bottom. I've never tried tempera cakes but it sounds like they would be a good idea.

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  2. I LOVE THESE! I have never heard of this artist, so thank you for introducing me to him. I can hardly wait to do this with my kids, although I think I may try it with my 1st/2nd grade combo class instead of my kinders.

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