Teaching Packet

Art Tales: Alma Thomas

Part of Art Tales for Pre-K

Alma Thomas loved to explore color—which she did as an artist and art teacher, teaching in Washington, DC, public schools for over thirty-five years. Many of her paintings include only one color or a few colors. Her paintings show her love of nature and music.

This nearly square, abstract painting is filled with circles within circles, like nested rings, each of a single bright color against the ivory white of the canvas. Each ring is made up of a series of short, rectangular dashes, and some bands are narrower while others are a bit wider. The majority of the rings are crimson and brick red, and they are interspersed with bands of lapis blue, army green, and pale pink. One of two pumpkin-orange bands is the smallest, innermost ring at the center. There is one aqua-blue colored ring just inside a pale, shell-white ring, which is the first to get cropped by the edges of the canvas. A few red, green, and blue rings beyond the white band are only seen at the corners of the canvas.
Alma Thomas, Pansies in Washington, 1969, acrylic on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Vincent Melzac), 2015.19.144

Grade Level

Subject

Language

Look

What colors stand out to you?

What shape do you see repeated in this painting? Can you count the number of times it appears?

Step back and look at the painting from far away. Does it look like anything to you? Step forward and take a look at the painting when you’re very close to it. What does it look like now?

Imagine you could step inside the painting. What would it feel like?

What one word would you use to describe the painting? What do you see that makes you say that?

Read

Planting a Rainbow (Spanish language version: Cómo plantar un arco iris)
by Lois Ehlert

A mother and child plant a rainbow of flowers every year and wait for the rainbow to grow.

Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History
by Vashti Harrison

This book offers short biographies of black women in history, including Alma Thomas.

Make: Create a Color Square

You Will Need

  • Paint sticks
  • Heavyweight paper cut into 8 × 8 inch squares

Choose one color from your paint sticks. Use it to make different shapes and lines within your paper square. Use just one color, like Alma Thomas, to make small blocks of color that build a larger painting. Try experimenting—turn the square or hold the paint stick differently—to create new marks and patterns! With a friend or a group, try combining your color squares in different ways to make one larger, multicolored square.

Vocab Bank

  • bold
  • experiment

Download

Art Tales: Coloring and Cut-Outs booklet (PDF, 3.5 MB)

Art Tales for Pre-K (PDF, 7.2 MB)

Primeros Pasos En El Arte (PDF, 7.5 MB)

Primeros Pasos En El Arte: Colorear y Recortes (PDF, 3.7 MB)

Visit

Register for the Art Tales pre-K school tour

Submit Student Work

Send images of your students' projects that follow these activities - email [email protected]

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This nearly square, abstract painting is filled with circles within circles, like nested rings, each of a single bright color against the ivory white of the canvas. Each ring is made up of a series of short, rectangular dashes, and some bands are narrower while others are a bit wider. The majority of the rings are crimson and brick red, and they are interspersed with bands of lapis blue, army green, and pale pink. One of two pumpkin-orange bands is the smallest, innermost ring at the center. There is one aqua-blue colored ring just inside a pale, shell-white ring, which is the first to get cropped by the edges of the canvas. A few red, green, and blue rings beyond the white band are only seen at the corners of the canvas.

Educational Resource:  Art Tales: Alma Thomas

A lesson for preschool to kindergarten students about artist Alma Thomas’ painting Pansies in Washington. Students learn how to look at this painting, what you can read to learn more, how to create a color square, and a list of vocabulary terms related to this activity.

Educational Resource:  Beyond the Frame: Dorothea Lange

The spruce-green silhouette of a broad-shouldered man standing among palm fronds looks up at a faint red star against a field of green circles radiating out from the horizon in this abstracted vertical painting. The scene is made with mostly flat areas of color to create silhouettes in shades of slate and indigo blue, lemon-lime and pea green, plum purple, and brick red. To our right of center, the man faces our left in profile. His eye is a slit and he has tight curly hair. The position of his feet, standing on a coffin-shaped, brick-red box, indicate his back is to us. He stands with legs apart and his arms by his sides. Terracotta-orange shackles around his wrists are linked with a black chain. A woman to our left, perhaps kneeling, holds her similarly shackled hands up overhead. A line of shackled people with their heads bowed move away from this pair, toward wavy lines indicating water in the distance. The water is pine green near the shore and lightens, in distinct bands, to asparagus green on the horizon. On our left, two, tall pea-green ships sail close to each other at the horizon, both titled at an angle to our right. Concentric circles radiate out from the horizon next to the ships to span the entire painting, subtly altering the color of the silhouettes it encounters. To our left, a buttercup-yellow beam shines from the red star in the sky across the canvas, overlapping the man’s face. Spruce-blue palm trees grow to our right while plum-purple palm fronds and leaves in smoke gray and blood red frame the painting along the left corners and edge. The artist signed the painting in the lower right, in black, “AARON DOUGLAS.”

Educational Resource:  Storytelling: Aaron Douglas