Texture Hands!

Hey, hey! So last week we covered TEXTURE from the Elements of Art. We talked about what texture is (the surface quality of an object/subject) and how can we feel or see it. We also learned that there are two types of texture: actual and implied. For my little ones, K-2, we only covered actual texture...that is texture we can actually feel. We listed off a few adjectives like hard, soft, scratchy, bumpy, fluffy, ect. But we couldn't quite get to our project until I asked them what do we use to feel texture...."OUR HANDS!" And boom, there was our project: Texture Hands.

Aren't these adorable! This was one of my 1st grade classes. We practiced our writing and identifying different textures all in the same project! They were given five different textures. After each sample we touched and felt we used our "describing words" to tell what it felt like. It didn't take too long for them to catch on and pinpoint the word I was looking for! So our first texture was felt, as in the fabric, and our adjective was soft. We then glued our texture to the top of our thumb, because that's where our "feeler" is located. After the glue we look our crayon and wrote "soft" at the base of the finger. We followed that process for laminating film/smooth, bubble wrap/bumpy, sand paper/rough, and aluminum foil/hard (like metal).  I think the project really got them to understand what texture is and how we can identify it! Here is another class example from another 1st grade class...

For my big kids, 3rd-5th, I wanted to keep the same idea of the texture hand but I knew I needed something more challenging...something that pertained to the other type of texture: Implied. Implied texture is something we can see in an art work (two-dimensional) but cannot feel. It simply looks like a texture we know. One of my favorite examples of this is in a work titled Countess d'Haussonville by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres from 1845.

In this painting we talked about her dress. What is it made out of? What do you think it feels like? How does it look when the light is cast on it? By looking at the folds of her dress, do you think it is light weight or heavy? How do we know? We just went on and on and on. By the end of our discussion we found out that is it made of a shiny silk or taffeta, probably light weight because the folds are small, and it would feel smooth and soft. This my readers, teachers and students is implied texture. The artist, Ingres, was very skilled at depicting fabrics so realistic that we would be able to "feel" them ourselves. So from this we learned that implied texture is something we can see in a picture and feel in our minds but not feel with our hands. So our assignment was also a texture hand, but they were not given actual textures. We talked about a few more textures, like the ones listed above, and then the fun began. They had to come up with a texture, think about what object has that texture, and draw it as one of their fingers. Confused? So were they, so we did this as a class for my 3rd graders. Sorry 4th and 5th, this project was individual (we brainstormed together, like what would be hard: bricks, desks, books, ect...but they had to draw it by themselves). So here is a 3rd grade example....

I LOVED this one for several reasons, but my primary reason has GOT to be the example they gave for "smooth." It is a ticket! The 3rd grade behavior management system is run on tickets. They get them for good behavior, following directions, ect. It is safe to say that these kids L-O-V-E their tickets. So I thought it was pretty cleaver that this little girl thought to draw a ticket as her "smooth finger." Got to love it. 

Unfortunately, I was not on my picture-taking-game last week so this was the only example I got around to photographing. But all the kids did a great job, especially my older ones. I know that implied texture is a little hard to wrap your head around, but they nailed it. Great job guys!

Stay tuned for next week, I will be posting it soon. Here's a hint as to what we learned: don't underestimate what a Paleo could do...or a Kindergartner!