Pink Elephants and Blue Horses-Franz Marc for Preschoolers

During the month of March my preschool class did two lessons based on the artist Franz Marc. The vivid use of color to express emotions and ideas is a trademark of this German born artist. He is most famous for his paintings of unusually colored animals set in almost abstract style scenery. Here is an example of some of his work:

Supplies

Acrylic paint (see sample for colors)

chalk pastels

Sharpies

Paint brushes

glue sticks

spray fixative

sponges

For the first project I found a Franz Marc horse on the internet as a coloring sheet which I traced onto  a scrap ofposter board. They outlined them in sharpie and used chalk pastel to fill in the color. After spraying them with fixative I cut them out. The kids then painted a colorful "warm colors" background with acrylic paints, using a sponge to add texture. When the background was dry they used the glue stick to place their horse in the scene. Here are some of the fininshed projects:

The second project was a great drawing project. I taught the kids how to draw a step by step simple elephant starting with a circle.(This is a simple way to draw an elephant-see How to Draw an Elephant @eHow.com) We practiced this two times on a practice sheet. Then we did the final drawing on a sheet of watercolor paper. We outlined the elephant in Sharpie. Then we used watercolors to fill in the pink and create a setting. I think both projects turned out amazingly well considering these are 3-5 yr.olds.

Supplies:

Watercolor paper

watercolors

pencil

Sharpie

scratch paper

pencil

Here are a few of the finished paintings:

I am going to adapt these two lessons for some of my older kids classes.