Project – Geometric to Organic
Artist – Andy Goldworthy
Materials Part 1:
- 9” x 12” white construction paper
- cardboard shape templates
- pencils
- washable Crayola markers
- small bowls with water
- watercolor brushes
Materials Part 2:
- black Sharpie markers
- mounting construction paper and glue sticks or staples
Set Up:
Protect desks or tables with newspapers or rolled paper as projects will get wet. Give every student a piece of white construction paper and a pencil. Set out markers for students to share as well as shape templates.
Discussion:
Shape is one of the basic elements of art, along with line, texture, color, space and composition. Shape defines an object in space. Shape and form go hand-in-hand. While shape has only height and width—like an object depicted in a two-dimensional painting—form has depth as well as width and height—as in a sculpture, or something you can touch in the real world.
Types of Shapes
Geometric shapes and forms are man-made. They include mathematical shapes like squares, rectangles, cubes, circles, spheres, triangles and cones.
Organic shapes are often found in nature. They have a natural look, and may have sides that are lopsided and bumpy, curvy and flowing, uneven or imperfect. Examples of organic shapes are leaves, clouds, animals, rocks, and more. Artists often imitate organic shapes in their works.
Featured Artist:
The British artist Andy Goldsworthy uses natural materials such as brightly-colored flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, stone, twigs, and thorns to create his art work. Many of his pieces of art are these materials turned into geometric shapes. Photography plays an important role in his art because of the material’s tendency to change. According to Goldsworthy, “Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit.”
Show the students the attached photographs of Andy Goldsworthy’s work here.
Class time:
As Andy Goldsworthy makes geometric shapes out of natural materials, our project will be to make organic shapes out of geometric shapes.
Part 1
- Have the students trace the shapes onto the white paper. Shapes can be overlapped.
- Color in all of the shapes with the markers. Colors can also overlap.
- Using the bowls of water and brushes, have the students drip water onto the art work. Water may puddle and that’s okay. The students can pick up the paper and roll the water around a bit; it should start to make lots of colored streaks and blobs. Repeat this until almost all of the artwork is filled with wiggly colored lines.
- Let dry until next class period.
Part 2: to be completed during the next class time
- Give each student a black Sharpie marker
- Have students look at the dried paper and look for organic shapes made by the water and original designs
- Students should outline as many organic shapes that they can find with the black marker. The students need to work slowly to trace all the wonderful edges they see, both inside and outside the colored shapes. The more time they put into the tracing, and the more detail they see, the better their art work will look.
- Using glue sticks or staples, mount completed art work onto colored construction paper.
