Op Art Opposities

This lesson follows up a lesson about Op Art. We spent some time looking at and discussing Op Art and optical illusions. Students created two drawings of opposite images. When the drawings were colored they measured 1" vertical strips across both drawings. Students cut one strip from one drawing and glued it onto a new sheet of 9x12 paper. They then cut the first strip from the second drawing and glued it next to the strip from the first drawing. They continued cutting and gluing one strip at a time from each drawing. Once all the strips were glued down they folded their paper accordian style. When opened up each opposite can be viewed from a different angle. The next time I do this project I think I would try using images that show movement so that when you look at the drawings it appears that they are moving.

Op Art

5th graders learned about Op Art. We looked at different examples and discussed what we saw in paintings by artists such as Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely. Students used the width of a ruler to draw vertical lines across a paper. They then traced various sized circles, making sure that some overlapped each other and some were cropped off the paper. Students choose two colors (next time I do this lesson I will ask them to choose complimentary colors) to color with. They had to alternate coloring between the background space and the inner circle. I had them mark it off in pencil first so that I could check it before they started to color- it can get confusing.