FRANZ MARC CUBI ST ANI MALS

I. CLASS: 2
nd
grade class, 40 minutes.

II. TIME NEEDED: 5 Class periods

III. ART HISTORICAL BACKGROUND RELATED TO LESSON:
Franz Marc was an artist that was born in Germany over 130 years ago (born in
1880). The subject of his artwork was often animals and he painted these animals in
a style that is very similar to Cubism. Cubism was a style that began during Marcs
lifetime where objects, like people and animals, were painted using geometric shapes
like rectangles, triangles and circles. Marcs style of painting animals uses lots of
geometric shapes like rectangles and triangles as well as using very bright colors.
Marc is technically considered an expressionist for this reasonbecause his use of
unnatural colors to represent animals and people is based on the emotions and
feelings attached to those colors rather than being the colors those animals actually
are in nature. For instance, in many of his paintings he paints horses with the color
blue. Obviously there are no blue horses, but he painted animals in these colors
because these colors had a personal meaning to Marc. Blues represented masculinity
(manliness), whereas yellow was his color for the femininity (femaleness), gentleness
and joy, and red represented the earth, matter, and violence. So Marc and other
German painters are called Expressionists because their use of color was based on
emotions rather than the actual colors of these things in nature. But Marcs style is
also very Cubist because he paints his subjects using flat, geometric shapes like
triangles and rectangles. His style was very influential, and stressed a spiritual
attitude to the process of making art. He co-founded the Blue Riders group in
Germany which centered around brining all forms of art togethermusic, poetry,
sculpture, etc. Although there were many artists involved with the Blue Riders, each
with various ideas about art, the thing they all have in common is that art should be
about spiritual ideas. That art be a spiritual process, was especially important to Franz
Marc, and his paintings are meant to be pieces that communicate a spiritual feeling.

IV. SUBJECT: Students will create a drawing of an animal inspired by the works of
Franz Marc and his use of geometric shapes and bright unnatural colors. The drawing
will use geometric shapes and color blending of oil pastels to create a work of art
similar to the paintings of Franz Marc.

V. EQUIPMENT / AV MATERIALS: PowerPoint presentation, Smart Board
projector, digital images of Franz Marcs painting and physical reproductions of
Marcs work as well as book and reproductions of animals for students to draw from.

VI. SUPPLIES: Paper, pencils, oil pastels, rulers, books with animal photos.



VII. OBJECTIVES:
Academic Skills: Students will learn about an important artist in art history, as well
as understand key concepts like Cubism and Expressionism.
Craftsmanship Skills: By creating a work of art similar to Franz Marcs, they will
learn about how to draw geometric shape to form the basic structure of an object (i.e.
an animal of their choice). They will also learn about color blending by using a
variety of colored oil pastels to achieve the colorful look that is characteristic of Franz
Marcs artwork.
Cognitive Skills: Students will learn about color blending and how by blending two
primary colors (red, blue, yellow) together, they can make secondary colors (green,
orange, purple). They will also have to use problem solving to work out the actual
drawing of the animal by using basic geometric shapes.

VIII. BENCHMARKS AND STANDARDS:
A. Ohio Benchmarks and Standards in the Visual Arts:
1PE: Notice and point out details and respond to expressive features in artworks.
2PE: Distinguish the subject matter and artistic style of two or more visual artists.
5PR: Identify, select and use art and design elements and principles to express
emotions and produce a variety of visual effects (e.g., nuances of surface, contour,
pattern and tone).
4RE: Share their personal interpretations of the meanings conveyed in various
works of art.
5RE: Describe how an artist uses the elements and principles of design to create
expressive impact in a work of art.
7RE: Recognize and discuss that people have various opinions about art and
value art for different reasons.


B. Benchmarks and Standards in Other Disciplines:
Mathematics:
- Measurement: Students will use materials like ruler to measure the size of
different body part in order to draw their proportions accurately
- Geometry and Spatial Sense: Students will use need to translate what they
observe about the shape of an animal and its body parts into geometric shapes
e.g. rectangles, squares, triangles.
Social Studies:
- History: Students will learn in general about the art history of Cubism,
German Expressionism, and in particular about the artist Franz Marc.
Science:
- Scientific inquiry: Students will use critical thinking and problem solving
skills to work out problems to visual challenges in drawing an animal by
breaking it down into basic geometric shapes.
English:
- Language Aquisition: Students new art vocabulary words e.g. blending,
primary colors, secondary colors, trace, geometric shapes, outline.



IX. LEARNER OUTCOMES: Students will be able to use geometric shapes to draw
the essential shapes of an animal and then use that as the basis for drawing an outline
around the animal with curved lines. They should also be able to understand the basic
concept of blending colors together, and that by blending 2 primary colors together,
they can create a new, secondary color.

X. SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS: The only safety concern with this project might be
if students, after using their fingers to blend the oil pastel colors together, put them in
their mouth and digest some oil pastel.

XI. ALTERNATIVES TO THE LESSON: Students who feel confident in using rulers
and other hard edge materials (e.g. protractor) will have the option of using them to
create their geometric shapes. For those who get done early will be asked to then
draw a background for their animal drawing. The students who may have a harder
time with creating an outline around their geometric shapes, will be allowed to simply
not draw an outline of their animal using curved lines; instead, to simply lead their
animals shape as pure geometric shapes. Or if needed, students can put their drawing
paper over the image of the animal they will be working from in order to use it as a
guide to trace out their geometric shapes over it.

XII. THEORIES/THEORISTS RELATED TO LESSON: Jean Piaget and his stage-
theory of development will be utilized by realizing that before students are ready to
move onto more realistic renderings of natural objects i.e. people and animals, they
need to becomes familiar with the preliminary steps of recognizing and recreating the
basic geometric shapes that roughly make up such objects. Kellogg and Lowenfelds
stages of artistic development also coincides with Piagets cognitive development
stages, where children of this age group would generally (with exceptions of course)
be categorized in somewhere between the Pre-Schematic and Schematic stages,
where students are learning how to draw people and animals with limbs and other
finer details e.g. fingers, nose, hair, etc.

XIII. ACADEMIC LANGUAGE: Art vocabulary terms associated with the lesson
include: blending, primary colors, secondary colors, trace, geometric shapes, outline,
Expressionism, and Cubism. Non-art vocabulary words for students to know are:
guide, spiritual, unnatural.

XIV. PROCEDURE:

1. Introduction: The lesson will begin with a PowerPoint presentation showing
examples of Franz Marcs work and also passing around the example piece that I
have created for the class so that they can get an idea of what their finished
product will look like.
A. Motivation Use PowerPoint slides of Franz Marcs work to talk about what
animals they can spot in his paintings, what the colors mean or feel like to
the students, and talk about what are their favorite types of animals.


B. New and Reviewed Experiences Students will have used geometric shapes
i.e. rectangles, to create the shape of a person in the last Minecraft Project,
where they created Minecraft people using rulers and rectangles. A new
experience for students will be color blending, in which theyll learn about
blending primary colors together to achieve secondary colors using oil pastels
(also a new material for most of the students).
2. Distribution of Materials and Implements: Helpers will be chosen to pass out
materials1 helper for each material: paper, oil pastels, and books/photos of
animals to work from
3. Work Period: Students will be given 4 work days to complete assignment.
A. Day 1: Students will begin by choosing an animal and an image of that
animal to use as the basis for their drawing. Student will be give the chance to
draw onto the photo of their animal in order to see how to translate the body
part of the animal into which geometric shapes. Student can then use that as a
guide to drawing those same shapes onto their drawing paper.
B. Day 2: Continue working on drawing their animals using geometric shapes
C. Day 3: Student should be done working on the drawing portion and ready to
begin coloring it using oil pastels
D. Day 4: Finish working on coloring their animals and adding shading and tints
to the colors, at which point they will be turned in for grading.
4. Clean Up: Each student will be responsible for cleaning their area and 2 helpers
will be chosen to collect the everyones drawings to be placed in their class shelf
5. Teacher-pupil Appraisal of the Art Activity: During the activity I will be walking
around to check if each student is making progress, and at the end of each session
a quick formative assessment will be applied by asking review questions about art
vocabulary terms and concepts including art historical questions.

XV. EVALUATION OF STUDENT WORK: The students will be evaluated on
whether they completed all tasks of the assignmentproduced a drawing of an
animal using geometric shapes, color blending and shading/tints.
Assessment of student ability to complete art
activity
Above and
Beyond
(roughly 1/3)
Evident

1
Not
Evident
0
Used geometric shapes to draw animal
Used color blending from primary colors to
achieve secondary colors

Use of shading and tint to produce different
values of colors

Possible points: 4.0 4.0 3.5 points = A + 3.0 points = A
2.5 2.0 points = B 1.5 points = C 1.0 points = D 0 points = F