Experiment with the color wheel for student color theory activities.
Create engaging and educational color theory art projects with students by incorporating art history and cooking. Color theory is the study of color and combinations of colors. Students can learn more about color theory through creating color wheels, along with mixing the primary colors (red, yellow, blue) to create secondary and tertiary colors.
Flavorful Color Wheel
Students will enjoy creating a colorful and tasty color theory activity by working together to create an edible color wheel. Pre-bake vanilla cupcakes or purchase vanilla wafers, along with vanilla frosting and food coloring for students to use. After looking at examples of a color wheel, students can make an edible color wheel by mixing small amounts of food coloring into small individual cups of the frosting to create the primary colors (red, yellow, blue). From there, students can work together to create the rest of the color wheel by mixing small amounts of the primary colored frosting in small cups to create the secondary and tertiary colors. Once the colors are mixed, children can frost their cupcakes or cookies and position them in the form of a color wheel. Document the finished project by taking a picture.
Creative Still Life
Use the color wheel as inspiration for an art activity introducing color theory concepts such as primary, secondary and tertiary colors. Discuss the primary (red, yellow, blue), secondary (orange, green, purple) and tertiary (yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green, yellow-green) color sets with students and how the colors are mixed together to achieve the color sets. Children can draw a simple still life, such as a vase with flowers, three different times on three different sheets of paper as just an outline. Using tempera paints, children can paint the three pictures using each of the color sets, making one painting with just the primary colors, the next with only the secondary colors and the third with the tertiary colors. The finished paintings can be displayed next to each other.
Emotional Self-Portrait
Learn more about the cool colors (blue, green, purple) and warm colors (red, yellow, orange) with self-portraits. Children can select a color set to use for setting a mood with their self-portrait. Brainstorm with children which colors evoke different moods and encourage each child to select an emotion to depict, through expression and color in their self-portrait. Children can use oil pastels or colored chalk to create their warm or cool color self-portraits. Once finished, the portraits can be displayed for others to view and guess the emotion depicted.
