LESSON PLANS SUMMER TERM 2023 (1st half). Lesson 4, Warm colours and cool colours - Two oranges.

In this lesson I shall be asking my students not only to be precise about what they see in terms of light and dark, but also to think about the mix of warm colours and cool colours to describe the two very obviously warm-coloured fruits!

Summer Term 1st half 2023 – lesson 4: Cool colours and warm colours. Drawing two oranges with colour pencils.

· Place your two oranges in front of you on a piece of white paper. The white paper is important in order to show the shadows clearly.

· From your colour pencils, find all your reds, yellows and oranges. Lightly outline the shape of your oranges - remember no two oranges are the same shape…look for their individual shapes.

· Make a small hole in your lesson plan paper (approx. half cm across) and holding it away from you, pass the hole across your oranges. This will allow you to see the different colours across your oranges.

· Using a yellow pencil, lightly hatch in the shapes within your outlines. Two yellow oranges! Now feed in other colours, darker yellow, oranges and reds. Keep using the small hole in your paper to help you understand the tonal differences across the oranges.

· Mix your colours so that no one area holds only one colour.

· Now select some cool colours – blues, purples etc. Draw in the shapes of the shadows. Look for the places where the orange is lighter than its background. Here you’ll darken the background in order to show that relationship.

· Again, mix your cool colours within the shadow shapes to ensure that no one area holds only one colour.

· Finally…crossover…bring some of the cool colours into the shadow areas on the oranges, bring some of the warm colours out into the darker areas of the shadows. Notice that, even with all the colours woven into the oranges, you don’t lose the fact that the oranges are orange!

Next lesson: Hopefully the two oranges will survive, bring them and watercolours. We’re going to look at the planet exercise, laying a wash and, as in this lesson, warm and cool colours.