Franz Marc Inspired Blue Horse Oil Pastel Project

Another Animal Themed Project for Camp this summer - 

This one inspired by Franz Marc and his Beautiful Blue Horses.

I am going to read the students the book "The Artist Who Painted A Blue Horse"  by Eric Carle, and then we'll look at a few examples of Franz Marc's Blue Horses.

I tried several versions of this project and eventually simplified it to one horse on blue card stock layered onto a sheet of red card stock.  The exaggeration and somewhat abstract style of Franz Marc is a challenge to translate into an elementary project.

This project is for young elementary age students so I'm going to give them an outline of the horse shape to trace onto blue paper.  Once they have the outline we'll free draw the inside lines of the jaw, eyes, ears, chest, stomach etc...

I'll demonstrate how to use oil pastels with emphasis on mixing colors and creating shadows and highlights.  They'll use an assortment of blue, black and white oil pastels to create a rich layering of color for their horse.

When they are satisfied with their horse we'll use the red card stock to draw a background similar to the one in this painting:

Now they'll use yellows, greens, oranges, etc.. to create their own version of Marc's vibrant color.

We'll talk about the direction of the oil pastel strokes and how they create movement in the "painting".  How using vertical lines in vertical shapes works better than horizontal.  The same for using horizontal lines in the sky etc...  They can ignore the area where the horse covers the paper.

Once finished we'll mat the Oil Pastels on Black Cardstock.

I can't wait to see the student's version of this project!