Dancing Panda Pilot - Activity 2 - “Snap an Imaginary Picture” (August 2020)

Good Morning, Panda Pal! Today we’ll be doing an art activity called “Snapping an Imaginary Picture.”

Pretend you are a photographer and use your hands to create a pretend picture frame. Look around your surroundings and decide if you want to take a picture of a person, a scene, or an object. Don’t forget to make a “click” sound when you find the picture you want to take. Once you decide on your picture, talk about what you see in your picture:

What colors do you see?
What lines do you see? Horizontal, vertical, jagged, wavy, or something else?
What forms or geometric shapes do you see? Square, circle, rectangle, triangle, or something else?
What form or 3D shapes do you see? Cone, cylinder, rectangular prism, or cube?
What different shades do you see? Where are the colors lighter or darker i.e. what light or dark values do you see?

Need some help doing this activity?

Tip:

Walk around your home or outdoor space, and observe your surroundings first by looking for something interesting. Then use your hands to create a frame around it.

Here is an example:

Maddie said the following to describe her picture:

I see red, white and blue colors.
I see a rectangular prism.
I see lines cut inside, so then it looks like they took little pieces and glued them together.

Want more fun?

Here are some more activities:

Go on a walk in your neighborhood and find more imaginary pictures to take.
Go to a park or a place that has nature, and include trees, grass, flowers and bushes in your imaginary picture.
Have some more time? Take an actual picture with a camera, and then go home and use any art supplies at home to recreate the picture you’ve taken. For example, use paint, crayon and markers to recreate your picture.

Was the activity too hard?

Have the grownup do the activity first-- take the “pretend” picture and share what shapes and forms you see.

Was the activity too easy?

Imagine you were to make a piece of art based on the picture you took.
- What kind of artwork would you create? A drawing, painting, sculpture, or something else?
- What textures would you create? How might you create them?
- How might you fill-up the space of what you create? Would you do a closeup of the picture you took? Or would you zoom out? How might the picture be different if you zoomed in vs. zoomed out?

Learning Connections

In “Snapping an Imaginary Picture”, children are observing their world through an artistic lens. By asking them about lines, shapes, and colors they see, they are learning about the seven elements of art. Children must learn about these elements, be able to identify them, and then use those elements to create their own art.
In addition, by asking children how they might create their own art based on what they see, they are learning and thinking about visual arts. Visual arts is art seen by the eyes and “evoke emotion through an expression of skill and imagination.” (Britannica) There are many visual art forms like ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, and printmaking. Modern visual art forms include photography, architecture, and filmmaking.