Warm and Cold Fish Art Project

This art project turns out so cool! I do this as a practice for warm and cold color identification. I use this in connection with my Literature unit based on the book Rainbow Fish and My Elements of Art curriculum.

Materials:
Colored Pencils
Black construction paper (cut to 6 x 8.5)
Project fish copies
Scissors
Glue

Students are taught the difference between warm and cold colors; blue, green, purple= cold, yellow orange and red= warm.

Students do this project in two parts;
1. Fish
2. Backgrounds.
This helps reinforce the idea of negative space and a focal point to the art work.

Doing the Fish
One fish is colored with cold colors only, the other fish is colored with warm colors only.

I have the students sort the colored pencils into warm and cold sets before beginning. While working with one set the other pencils are not on the table to decrease errors.

Backgrounds
After the fish have been colored appropriately the children then work on the backgrounds. The background is done in the opposite colors from the fish. Fish-cold, background-warm.

Displaying the project.
1. Students cut out the fish
2. Glue one fish on each side of the black construction paper.
3. Hang from ceiling hangers.

Once this project is finished it illustrated very well how great artists use color to establish a focal point and to get specific parts to "pop" out to the human eye. It is an impressive show of artistic skills.