Overview: This lesson focuses on Alan Bean's Moonscape paintings, planets, and color use. Emphasis should be on the landscapes rather than the astronauts and space equipment, but it could be made into a space exploration self-portrait quite easily.
Title: Alan Bean Spacescape
Grade Level: 5th-12th
Length of Time: 1 hour
Interrelated Disciplines: Astronomy, English
Description: Acrylic painting of an alien landscape based on Alan Bean's moon paintings.
Motivation: Students will look at examples of Alan Bean's paintings and images of other planets in our solar system via PowerPoint or printouts (color is recommended).
Grade Level: 5th-12th
Length of Time: 1 hour
Interrelated Disciplines: Astronomy, English
Description: Acrylic painting of an alien landscape based on Alan Bean's moon paintings.
Motivation: Students will look at examples of Alan Bean's paintings and images of other planets in our solar system via PowerPoint or printouts (color is recommended).
Materials:
Preparation:
Vocabulary:
Objectives:
Procedure:
Assessment:
Extensions:
Resources:
- Paper
- Pencil and eraser
- Acrylic or tempera paint
- Paint brushes
- Cardboard (cut to preferred size)
- Cups (for water)
- Paper towels (for clean-up)
Preparation:
- Create a sample
- Cut cardboard to preferred size. (I used 9x12 in cardboard)
Vocabulary:
- Landscape: an artwork depicting an outdoor scene or scenery
- Monochrome: color scheme limited to different values of one hue. Usually in an artwork.
- Neutral: black, white, tints, and shades of grey. Brown can also be considered as a neutral.
Objectives:
- Students will effectively use one color as the primary color-palette for their spacescape (the sky can be a different color).
- Students will effectively write a short description about their newly discovered planet.
- Students will effectively depict a sky and ground for their invented planet.
Procedure:
- Talk to students about Alan Bean, his paintings, and his career as a NASA astronaut.
- Show students images of his paintings and images of the planets in our solar system.
- Talk about monochromatic paintings.
- Describe your own sample, and how you made choices for your discovered planet. I chose to add mountains and craters with scrub brush to show that the planet is mostly dry. I also gave it two better show it was a different planet.
- Pass out paper, pencil and erasers and ask students to draw two thumbnails before they start painting
- Begin painting - encourage students to use a singular paint color (with different values) for the land.
- When finished, ask students to write a short description of their planet and its life forms (if there are any).
- Share the paintings in a group, and ask students to read their description.
Assessment:
- Students effectively used one color as the primary color-palette for their spacescape.
- Students effectively wrote a short description about their newly discovered planet.
- Students effectively depicted a sky and ground for their invented planet.
Extensions:
- For a more in depth description of their planet, you may choose to assign the writing portion before they start drawing the thumbnails. This way, they can put more work into the overall concept and design of their planet.
- As stated in the Overview, you could turn this into an astronaut self-portrait.
Resources:
- http://www.alanbeangallery.com
- http://www.projectarticulate.org/glossary.php