DEEP SPACE 40-MINUTES PA U L K L E E. DEEP SPACE SPARKLE/PATTY PALMER All Rights Reserved.

What You ll Need: 12 x 9 90-lb watercolor paper Black and white oil pastel Pan watercolor paints Brushes and water Objectives: Learn about Paul Klee and his expressive style of painting Identify cubism in the painting The Seafarer This lesson checks off many standards; children learn about artist Paul Klee, identify warm and cool colors, understand watercolor resist and follow a directed line drawing. My favorite part of this lesson however, is watching the children draw their fish. I do a few demonstrations of the drawing on the white board and talk about the difference between a cubist fish and a realistic fish. They love drawing their wacky fish. Having Klee s art print Sinbad the Sailor (The Seafarer ) displayed really helps explaining this concept. Understand cubism by drawing a fish using straight lines, angle lines and nonrealistic shapes. D E E P S P A C E S P A R K L E & T H E M E M B E R S C L U B!2

About Paul Klee Paul Klee was born in Switzerland. As a young child, Paul loved playing the violin and creating art but he eventually decided to choose art over music and go to art school. Color was very important to Klee and each color he placed in his painting was significant to him. He once said, Color has possessed me color and I are one. Even though Klee used black strokes to dominate his paintings, color remained his truest inspiration. When Klee was older, he visited Tunisia, a small country in northern Africa. He saw many colors there that were different from his native Switzerland; golden sunlight, amber hills, orange deserts. Paul Klee was interested in how a painting made someone feel rather than making it look realistic. Often the figures in his paintings appear more like objects rather than people. His art is called abstract because his subjects are not portrayed realistically. Did you know. That Paul Klee could paint with both his right and left hand? That he was considered a very famous painter while he was alive and that the public called him the magical painter? The Nazis forced Klee into exile and condemned his paintings? That Paul Klee wrote poetry? The Seafarer, 1923, Offentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel, Switzerland View artwork: http://www.wikiart.org/en/ paul-klee/battle-scene-from-the-comicfantastic-opera-the-seafarer-1923 D E E P S P A C E S P A R K L E & T H E M E M B E R S C L U B!3

D E E P S P A C E S P A R K L E & T H E M E M B E R S C L U B!4 The Seafarer Coloring Page

THE SET-UP Because this lesson focuses on warm and cool colors, I place my simple color wheel poster in the middle of my white board. I add a few books on Klee, a few posters or prints of his artwork (especially the ones that demonstrate cubism) and a piece of watercolor paper fro my demo. It may help to draw a few cubist-styled fish so that the kids can get the idea that the goal is not to draw a realistic fish, but rather one that looks quite out of sorts. This is really fun for the kids as it gives them permission to let go of what they imagine would be a well-drawn fish. D E E P S P A C E S P A R K L E & T H E M E M B E R S C L U B!5

DRAWING THE CUBIST FISH Drawing fish is a relatively easy subject for children as young as five. We talk about fish...how they see, how they eat, how they propel through the water and how they steer. These conversations reinforce that each fish must have some type of body, eyes, mouth, tail and fins. Hand each child a black oil pastel and watercolor paper. Draw two dots in the left hand side of the paper. Draw circles around the dots. Place oil pastel just in front of the eye and make a line that goes up and over the eyes and down to the other side of the paper. Stop drawing before you reach the edge. Go back to the first spot and place oil pastel on the beginning of the line. Make a "less than" sign. Make it as big or a funny as you want. This is the mouth. On the bottom of the mouth, draw the bottom of the body. The lines can be straight or curvy or smooth; whatever you want. Add a fun tail. Would you like to add teeth? Make them big. Draw a line that divides the fish in half, either down the middle or across the body. Add more lines; some intersecting and some not. For the background, use the white oil pastel to draw intersecting lines behind the fish. This means that the lines can't go over the fish. D E E P S P A C E S P A R K L E & T H E M E M B E R S C L U B!6

PAINTING TIPS Be very specific whether or not you want to paint the background first or the fish first. The fish will take longer, so if you want to read the story, talk about Klee and cubism and get started on the drawing in one class, painting the background first is the best option. If at all possible, wait until day two to start painting. Explaining warm and cool colors to children this age is not as easy as it sounds. We know that red, orange and yellow feel warm to us as we associate these colors with heat. Some children just don't have these associations yet. Having a warm and cool color chart is especially helpful to reinforce color temperatures. The easiest color to explain is blue. Most children associate blue with the sea. if you ask children if the sea is warm or cool, they will all say cool. But this, of course, may not be true to some children who have experienced warm ocean waters. Some children have never touched the ocean, so you can see that even this simple assumption may not hold true for all. Still, these are the concepts adults tell them so they are pretty good at remembering what we say. Once the orange, pink, yellow and red have been applied to the fish body, it's time to talk about cool colors: greens, blues and purples. If you have a 16-color paint palette, there are lots of cool color options to use without even mixing. That's why I love these palettes. Yes, you can mix pinks and tangerines, but this lesson is for 4-6 year olds and mixing at this age is hard. Mixing at any age is hard if you really think about it! The best part about the background is that the white oil pastel is almost invisible up until point. When they start painting the background, it's as though they have forgotten that they applied the white in an earlier class. Take a step back while they paint the background and listen to their reactions. This is why you are an art teacher. Pure joy. Some children will stick to one cool color. I know why. They are immersed in the resist effects and they don't stop to think that artistically, more colors should be applied. This is what teachers are thinking, but not kinders. D E E P S P A C E S P A R K L E & T H E M E M B E R S C L U B!7

D E E P S P A C E S P A R K L E & T H E M E M B E R S C L U B!8

I can statements for Klee Fish Today I will learn about LINE and SHAPE, so that I CAN use straight and angled lines to create a fish painting in the Cubist style of Paul Klee. I will also be able to identify Cubism in the painting, The Seafarer. Today I will learn about WARM AND COOL COLORS, so that I CAN create a fish that stands out from my background (contrast). Today I will learn about WATERCOLOR RESIST, so that I CAN create a colorful fish composition with oil pastel designs enhanced by watercolor paint. Common Core STANDARDS for klee fish CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.2.7 Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot. You can have students discuss what information they have learned from the artwork presented in a children s book about Paul Klee. Guiding them with questions about the text can help them not only to understand what the story is about, but also what the artwork could mean to the viewer. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.2.2 Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media. After reading a children s book about Paul Klee to introduce his style of art, ask students questions about the artwork, the story, etc. to formally assess their understanding of the text. CCSS.Math.Content.2.G.A.1 Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces.1 Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes. After students have drawn their Cubist fish, you could have them identify shapes they created using straight and angled lines such as triangles, quadrilaterals, etc. to build on their math concepts. D E E P S P A C E S P A R K L E & T H E M E M B E R S C L U B!9

MY NAME IS: I USED THESE SUPPLIES: I LIKE MY ART BECAUSE D E E P S P A C E S P A R K L E & T H E M E M B E R S C L U B!10

ASSESSMENT CHECKLIST Main Ideas from Klee Geometric Fish: Student Name: Can the student identify artwork by Paul Klee? Did the student draw a fish using geometric shapes and angled lines? Did the student paint the fish with warm colors and the background with cool colors? D E E P S P A C E S P A R K L E & T H E M E M B E R S C L U B!11