First Lesson

TAKE A BITE OUT.... Try it you might like it!

MAKING ART

Lesson One The Chocolate Chip Cookie

Recipes are wonderful for the cook in the kitchen. Recipes are wonderful for artists as well.
Beginning artists must first learn though that the ingredients in are are quite a bit different than the ingredients in a regular recipe.

If you buy a cookbook it is filled with recipes from everywhere. Usually with every recipe there is an ingredient list for shopping. When you go to the supermarket you walk in and face literally millions of ingredients that can be used in recipes.

Art is similar but strangely much simpler. There are only seven main ingredients in art.
I usually teach this lesson with Children and we make chocolate chip cookies.


I ask them what goes into making the cookies. They tell me eggs, flour, sugar, salt, butter.... the normal things that are in cookies. I have everything out on the counter, premeasured and ready. We also talk about other recipes, like what might go into Meatloaf, or a cake, or into pancakes. We talk about how different foods have different ingredients and how they all taste different, but use some of the same things in making them; and how they all look different too despite having the same ingredients.

They take turns adding different ingredients and we stir them together watching how they change as they blend.


Then we take turns scooping out the cookie dough onto the pans. Of course every one has one extra spoon to take a bite of the creamy cookie dough.


I slide the cookie sheets into the oven and we begin to talk about art now as they bake.

The finish is milk and cookies for the rest of the lesson.

In art there are only seven ingredients. Unlike the grocery store with all those items stacked ceiling high, art only requires seven main elements. They are line, shape, space, color, texture, form and values. Only seven. Now there are other things that will play into the development of these seven but for the first intro to art, lets just talk about these seven things. In future lessons you will be asked to use these elements. As we progress into other art projects and lessons you will need to be able to identify what elements are in that particular piece of art.

Line

Line is the path of a moving point. Lines define the edges of shapes and forms.

Shape

Shape is an area encolsed by line. It is 2 dimensional and can be geometric or organic.

Form

Forms are three dimensional. They occupy space or give the illusion that they occupy the space.

Color

Color is the most expressive element of art and is seen by the way light reflects off a surface.

Value

Value is the lightness or darkness of a surface. It is often referred to when shading but value is also important in the study of color.

Texture

Texture is the actual surface feel of an area of the simulated appearance of roughness, smoothness or many others.

Space

Space is the illusion of objects having depth on the 2-dimensional surface. Linear and aerial perspective are used.

I will leave you to ponder these seven elements! Look through magazines now and see if you can find examples of Line for our next lesson. Clip out the picture and paste it in your sketch book. We will have our next lesson on "LINE". Have your sketch book ready, markers, pencils, what ever you like to make lines with...charcoal, anything. Just a simple lesson to introduce you to line.

from my heART to you.
Laurie

Supplies: Next lesson have your sketchbook ready with your example of LINE glued into it. Have something to make lines with too.