Hubble Space Telescope: There is color in space!

I want kids to be excited about color. I think color is one of the most exciting elements of art and it can be used to create so many different effects in a student's artwork. Color is all around us, we think clouds are white  but really they are full of greys and purples and yellows and blues and greens. We think the water is blue but it's not, it's full of all sorts of colors and reflections.

In second grade we talked about space and the color that is in space. We discussed the colors that we see when we look at space, and how it seems to be only a couple of colors. Then we talked about the Hubble Space Telescope. We looked at pictures of it and discovered how it worked. ( Hubble Space Telescope website) But what we really spent time looking at was the pictures that it sends back to Earth. Man these pictures have some great color! (Video of Hubble Pictures) This project inspiration came from this blog, check it out! makeitawonderfullife.blogspot.com

The students practiced using chalk pastels. They practiced several techniques that I demonstrated (blending colors together, putting colors on top of each other, making the edges of shapes fuzzy, and using scrap paper to mask an area of their artwork.) and they also just plain got comfortable with the medium.

On the second day of this project, I had several pictures taken from the Hubble Telescope. Again I did a demo to show students how  one of those pictures would translate into a chalk pastel drawing. We discussed how my picture didn't look exactly like the Hubble Telescope pictures and that was okay because we were just using the pictures as inspiration (where we get ideas) rather than trying to copy them. Students went to town and boy did a lot of them turn out great! What an awesome project to explore color. The students were so excited to learn all about how the telescope worked and they really got into the idea of color in space. I loved this project, easy and inspiring and definitely full of color!