News
Colors in Literature and Art
by Hilary Hersh
Recently, English 8H students did a cross-curricular project on colors in both literature and art. The class has been reading Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes, which is about Hurricane Katrina. In the book, colors are used as symbols that represent themes such as the potential for harmless or beautiful things like a white cloud or a red heart to become deadly as well as the hope conveyed by a rainbow.
Art teacher Karl Hartman, who has been teaching about colors in his 8th grade art class, visited the class for a tutorial about colors in nature and art. His lesson included information about aposemitism, which is how an animal's colors signal toxicity to predators. He also went into detail about the color wheel, primary and secondary colors, how colors relate to each other as complementary (opposites that intensify each other) or analogous (share a hue), and warm vs. cool colors.
The students then found weather maps of Hurricane Katrina on the internet and drew them using all the colors that illustrate parts of the storm. Once finished, they labeled the drawings with both parts of a hurricane and color terminology. Finally, the students planned and wrote paragraphs about one way colors are used as symbols in the book.
