An Art a Day takes the Blues Away: Lines make Shapes

Previously posted on August 7, 2015 @ homescool.ph

We use lines to create outlines and so, lines create shapes. Familiarize your students with the different kinds of shapes. For older children, you can tie this with Math since shapes have formal definitions too. For younger children, you may try to check this link to get ideas on how to make learning about shapes more fun.

Shapes may either be two dimensional with only height and width, or three dimensional with height, width, and depth. You can go around the house and search for different shapes among your everyday objects.

For preschoolers, you may check this video or another one to learn more about shapes through a video and song. Then you can have a shape search around the house. Basically, they go around the house and draw shapes or outlines that they see and if they can, to try to spell the name of the shape.

They may draw the TV and say it’s “rectangle” or a “clock” and identify it as a circle. Make sure you write the shapes in written word so they can copy and learn how to spell.

If they are familiar with shapes and how to draw them, you can just ask them to choose one shape and make a drawing full of that shape only. Our boy did this when they were 8 years old.

You can open a magazine together and he/she can cut objects that represent a specific shape. You can make a “Shape” album with magazine cut outs. For older kids, you may introduce 3-dimensional shapes such as cones, pyramids, rectangular prisms, sphere, cylinder and then also find objects at home that represent these 3-D shapes (Canned goods, cheese or butter, ice cream cone, balls, etc.)

The book, “There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly” by Simms Taback is a really amusing story with lots of illustrations of shapes and outlines.

Try to get this book or use this video. Pause on every page to identify shapes.

For fine art examples, you may check out:

Paul Klees’s Red Balloon

Or Henry Matisse’s The Parakeet and the Mermaid.

Locally, our national artist, Cesar Legaspi is also known to make use of a style that creates shapes.

Arturo Luz creates shapes with more distinct outlines:

For older children, you can assign them to research more on Filipino artists who uses a lot of “shapes” or the illusion of shapes. You may even visit a few galleries on the Mega Mall 4th floor to just see more “Art” forms (include Sculpture, Sketches, Mosaic, etc.) and recognize the elements of Art that we’ve been studying in this series. If you feel “academic”, you can give the kids clipboards, a worksheet to answer and a camera to take photos of the art works that caught their attention. Have fun!