This 7th grader was thinking about a painting she saw in a museum in Europe during a family trip last summer. She recalled that she was very attracted to a particular painting because of the artist’s use of many shades of mostly one color. She thought she would explore this idea of a monochromatic color scheme by dividing her paper into measured strips, and creating a value scale – an arrangement of shades and tints of just one hue, from very dark to very light.
Working carefully with a ruler and black, white and red paint, “L” built her painting from left to right, until the whole page was filled with vivid stripes.