Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko is one of my favorite painters! I had a class of 1st and 2nd graders who were a day ahead of the rest so they both got to do a quick one-day project on him so that the others could catch up. Rothko liked to make really large paintings. He wanted people to stand close to his paintings so that the only thing they could see was his painting. He believed that he could use colors and their interactions with each other to make people feel different emotions.

Students hadn't used chalk in awhile so I thought this would be a good opportunity for them to use it. Students were asked to draw two or three large squares or rectangles on the center of their paper. They could leave a little bit of space between each shape or they could have each square or rectangle touch each other. I encouraged them to blend two different colors together for each shape. I didn't tell them which colors to mix together, but encouraged them to think about their knowledge of color theory. Lastly, they filled in the borders around their shapes.