Color Wheel Eyes

After exploring the color orange and making our pumpkin paintings, 3rd grade artists learned about the color wheel. Last year, as 2nd graders, they painted a color wheel with the three primary colors (red, yellow and blue) and three secondary colors (orange, green and violet). 

This year, we expanded to include six tertiary colors. Tertiary colors are combinations of primary and secondary colors. There are six tertiary colors: red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and red-violet. An easy way to remember these names is to put the primary color name before the secondary color. 

Students started by painting their primary colors, and then mixing their secondary colors. We thought about how to make the secondary color look different than the tertiary colors, and we remembered than when we were mixing different shades of orange, if you added more red it was darker, or a red-orange, and if you added more yellow it made it lighter, or yellow-orange. 

Once the color wheels dried, we transformed them into eyes through collage. First, we learned about two parts of the eye, the pupil and the iris. The pupil is the black circle in the center of the iris. It changes size, getting bigger or smaller, depending on the amount of light going through, to help us see. The iris is the colored circle around the pupil, and it works with the pupil as it changes size. 

After cutting out the color wheel, students drew an eye shape on white paper, placing the color wheel in the center to help create a lemon shape around it. Then students glued the white eye shape and color wheel on top of a background and used black paper to add details, like eyelashes and eyebrows. 

We discussed what shapes might work best for the eyelashes, and many students chose to cut long triangles, rectangles, and some students also curled the ends to lift off the paper. Below are some examples of our color wheel eye collages.

Jaylyn, 3rd grade (Monfette)

Jason, 3rd grade (Fletcher)

Zach, 3rd grade (Monfette)

Pirada, 3rd grade (Stone)

Dorie, 3rd grade (Lutz)

Iris, 3rd grade (Lutz)

Gabe, 3rd grade (Fletcher)