Art Education for the Home School

Art is an important, but often overlooked, subject when it comes to educating today's children. Through art, children learn a different way to perceive the world around them, a new way to express themselves, and cultural lessons. However, teaching meaningful art lessons in the home schooling environment can be difficult. This article is the third in a series entitled Art Education for the Home School. This series is designed to give the home schooling parent the lessons and resources necessary to build an effective home school art education curriculum. Lesson one focused on the elements of art and line. Lesson two explored shape and form. This lesson will continue with the elements of color and value.

The elements of art, or the building blocks of all artworks, are line, shape, form, texture, color, value and space. All art education should begin with this foundation. Below are two lessons on the elements of color and value. Color and value are close cousins when it comes to art. A vast majority of the time, when color is present, value comes along for the ride. Color is also a very expansive element. One could teach a whole month simply covering color theory. In the lessons below, I've included much information on color theory, covering national art academic expectations through middle school. Feel free to pair down the information for a younger audience. After this article, be sure to check back for the final installment on art elements. Next up will be texture and space.

COLOR

Definition -- an element of art, technically the wavelength of light reflected by an object. To better understand color in reference to art though, one must break it down.

Hue -- the actual name of a color found in its pure state, i.e. red, violet, blue, etc.

Primary colors -- red, blue, and yellow. The colors from which all other colors can be mixed.

Secondary colors -- orange, green, and violet. Colors achieved by mixing two primaries.

Intermediate colors -- red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and red-violet. Colors achieved by mixing a primary and secondary color.