Warhol Inspired Cows

I decided that 3rd grade was going to do a few projects on Pop Art so I thought we would kick things off with the king of Pop Art, Andy Warhol. Warhol was an American artist who liked to depict things that were popular at the time, hence the name 'Pop Art.' This included celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, rock stars like Elvis Presley, and everyday objects like Campbell's Soup cans. He is also well-known for portraying the same picture several times, just using different colors.

We started off the project talking about things that were popular in the Milton/Janesville area. We agreed that Bessie the Cow outside of Arby's was a pretty iconic sculpture for the area. This became the subject matter for our paintings. We took our paper and folded it in half going both directions so we had 4 rectangles on our paper. Then we used one of my cow tracers to trace a cow into each square.

The next couple classes were spent talking about complementary colors which were used to color their artwork. Complementary colors are colors that are directly across from each other on the color wheel. I usually tell them to remember the Minnesota Vikings (yellow and purple), Chicago Bears (blue and orange), and Christmas (red and green). First, they had to outline their cow using a crayon. Then they had to outline the square around that cow with its complementary color. The crayon outlines help to keep our paint from running together during the next step of the project. After they were done with their crayons, they used watercolors to paint the cows the colors of the crayons that they had used.

Of course I had to wear my Warhol sweater while we were studying about him!