Op Art Hands - 6th Grade

Since we came back from holiday break on a Thursday and as often happens after a break, many students are absent, so starting something large always creates an issue. I decided to use a quick short lesson on op art to fill in the gap. That way we didn't have to jump into a really large project and this allowed us sometime to get back into the swing of things. This small project was a relief, especially when I came down a severe case of strep the following Monday. It was just easy enough that a sub could teach it to the students who trickled in but not something that just wasted time, we don't have time for that in the Geisler Art Room.

For this project students drew their hand (most traced) but some actually thought about the position their hand was in and then drew it. Then using markers and a ruler they drew straight lines until they hit the outline of their hand, at that point they bent the line to make it look like it was traveling over their fingers. We found out that you want to start by drawing a bunch of lines in one color, at various distances on your paper, then switch to another color. By trying to alternate each color constantly across the page it takes too much time and tends to get frustrating but by jumping around with the colors the projects seemed to go faster and was more successful.

Students were graded on the following criteria:
  - Did the lines gently bend over their hand
  - Could you see the hand pop out of the lines with out having the pencil line
  - Did the students use 3 or more colors
  - CRAFTSMANSHIP (was it done neatly)