3rd Grade Art Smart Lesson Plan
Non-Objective Art 1
Project Summary: Students will create a piece of non-objective art with a
paper plate, garbage with various textures and then adult will spray paint
them gold or silver.
Art examples: Matisse’s “Beasts of the Sea”, Vasarely’s “Vega Kontosh”
and Rothko’s “Orange and Yellow” (Could not find these prints so went to
Western Springs Library and checked out American Masters and Vasarely to
show examples of their work.)
Additional info available in the 4th grade Art Awareness book – pg. 4-14
Materials needed: paper plates; Elmer’s glue and popsicle sticks; garbage
with texture; gold spray paint; cookie sheets
Things to do before class:
• glue, spray paint and various junk items are provided
• Collect garbage – Styrofoam noodles, straws, pop tabs, toilet paper
tubes cut up, paper clips, bubble wrap, feathers, foil, buttons, muffin
tins, etc.
• Created examples of hard edges on paper using blue masking tape
and red, yellow and green tempera paint and showed soft edges by
blending colors with a little water (example in folder)
Lesson plan:
Introduce volunteers.
Script - Art has always been an important part of people’s lives, which dates
all the way back to cave drawings. An artist uses art to share his ideas about
the world. This can be done with a painting of a forest or simply a painting
of shapes and colors which represents something. Artists are very creative
and use lots of different mediums to express their ideas. An artist’s eyes are
not like a camera, he sees something and it can be changed because of his
emotions or feelings about the subject. Sometimes an artist does not have
anything specific in mind when they are creating their art work. When an
artist has no object in mind it is called nonobjective art.
Write nonobjective art on board
We are going to talk about 3 way artists create nonobjective art
1 – hard edge (write on board)
Sometimes artists create art with very hard edges. They use thick paint and
paint to a line. Paint that is think which you cannot see through is called
opaque paint. (write on board) Sometimes artists use masking tape to create
a hard edge and then remove the tape. It is hard to draw a straight line so
artists use a ruler as a tool to help them.
demonstrate
2 – Soft edge
Some artists make soft edge paintings. Edges fade so you cannot see them
and colors change slowly. This is called color gradation. When artists want
colors to fade into each other, they use thin paint. If you can see through
paint, it is called transparent paint. Before an artist paints on a canvas he
covers the canvas with a liquid to keep the paint from soaking and
spreading. When he wants a soft edge he does not cover the canvas, you can
also use damp paper before you add paint.
Demonstrate
3 – Collage
When a number of different materials are pasted together to create a work of
art we have a collage. Collages are different than a usual painting
I then used the script from the 4th Grade Art awareness book on pg. 4-15 to
discuss the prints of the artists.
(Show plate sample.) Here is a nonobjective texture collage. You can see
there are lots of different textures in this collage. What is texture? What
textures do you see in this collage? In the classroom? We are going to give
each of you a collection of junk, it is your job to use different textures to
make your collage interesting. Before you glue anything, be sure to make a
design first and think through your project. When it is what you want, use
the glue to put it on the plate. We will then take home the plates and spray
paint them with metallic gold paint to give them a more finished look.
Lesson –
• Use several cookie sheets so students can sift through the junk of
various textures to create their collage.
• Give each team a paper plate of Elmer’s glue and a popsicle stick per
student to glue on junk.
• Each child created a collage of junk, emphasizing different textures
and glued them on to a paper plate.
• Let student’s plates dry for a day and collect with a few laundry
baskets. Bring home and lay out an old sheet. Spray paint the plates in
gold and let dry. Do this outside!!! Bring back for students once dry,
they are so excited to see their finished masterpieces!
• Optional – word search in folder
Parent letter:
Dear Parents,
Today Art Smart volunteers visited your child’s fourth
grade classroom and discussed non-objective art. We
showed how it is a form of art that shows nothing
recognizable. The artist is simply creating something
that is interesting or beautiful.
We looked at pictures and prints by Matisse,
Rauschenberg and Rothko. In these examples we
looked for hard and soft edges as well as opaque and
transparent colors. A collage is also an example of
non-objective art. For our project, we used pieces of
recyclables and random items with various textures to
create an interesting three dimensional collage. This
collage will be spray painted and returned to your
child next week.
We discovered that non-objective art could be a way to
paint an idea, a feeling or even an emotion. We hope
you enjoy your child’s collage as much as we enjoyed
helping them create it.