DESCRIPTION: Students use their imaginations to express the way a color makes them feel.

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this activity is to highlight ways that color can convey emotion and ideas.

PROCEDURE: What is your favorite color? Now, close your eyes and be very quiet. Think of your favorite color and pretend that you are becoming that color. Start with your toes. The color is slowly moving up to your knees, now to your wrist, now the color has moved all the way to your shoulders and now to the very top of your head. Your whole body has become your favorite color! What does it feel like to be this color? Are you cold or hot? Happy or angry? Do you think that people will be surprised to see that you have become another color? What will they say to you? What if not only you became this color, but the entire room became the color, and slowly the whole world changed to that color, how would it feel? Would you become sick of that color? If you could add only one color to make your surroundings better, which color would you choose?

Now that you have become your favorite color, let's find our favorite colors in a work of art. (Select a work that contains a variety of colors.) Look carefully. Do you see your favorite color? Do you see your color in more than one place? Does it seem different in some places? Is your favorite color bright or dull? Light or dark? How many different versions of your favorite color can you find? Where is it the brightest? Where is it the darkest? When you thought of your color did you know it could be so different? (Continue through a few paintings.)

MINNESOTA GRADUATION STANDARDS:
(1) Read, View, Listen
(2) Write and Speak
(3) Literature and the Arts

Age level: Appropriate for grades K-6.
Artworks used: Use this activity in galleries that contain a broad range and variety of colors in paintings and sculptures.
Props needed: No props needed.
Related to Minneapolis Sculpture Garden: No
Notes: This activity is also used in Level I to learn how to identify the basic element of color. At Level II, students not only learn about identifying colors, but also learn about the different values associated with color, and that color communicates moods and feelings.


© 1998 WALKER ART CENTER