The main purpose of Organic Abstraction is to emulate the germinal form of nature. I would LOVE to find an iPad app or interactive website that illustrates notan. Organic shapes is a collection of art that is currently available for purchase at Gabrielle Thormann. They still illustrate the concept of positive and negative space although they are in places asymmetric.Īlthough we did these red paper notans in honor of Valentine’s Day, they will look great displayed as a group any time of year. They are beautiful designs, even if they don’t fully fulfill the assignment. But you know what? I consider the artworks successful. The next two designs contain cut pieces that were rotated incorrectly. I also think that their second attempts will be even better. Some made Valentines and wanted to take them home immediately.

Cut pieces could be geometric (hearts were popular) and/or organic shapes. Double cuts were optional (about half the students tried them). The minimum assignment was to make four single cuts – one cut from each of the square’s sides. I found two really good resources that gave me confidence: 1) a great video that shows the notan process and 2) a great illustration showing single and double cuts.Įach student started) with a 6″ square of red construction paper and a white format (background) paper. This was the very first time I taught notan. Learners will be able to analyze the organic shapes and colors she used. Here, youll find brief information about her life and art style, as well as eight of her famous flower paintings. Notan cut paper projects are great for teaching a lot of concepts including contrast, positive and negative space, symmetry, and geometric vs. Introduce the art of Georgia OKeefe to you class. If you are unfamiliar with notan, it is a Japanese design concept of dark and light. Our inspiration came from these beautiful notan artworks at the MiniMatisse blog. Our 5th and 6th grade students did a quick 40-minute cut paper notan collage project. I would love to use this technique to create a Van Gogh-inspired vase of sunflowers! We used Fadeless Art Paper– it is colored on one side and white on the other. If you look carefully at our collages, you will see a white torn edge on the red and green papers. They really enjoyed observing real plants, much more than working from a picture or from my example. Second grade results:īecause we had live poinsettias on the tables, I encouraged students to hold up their torn shapes to the real leaves for comparison. As a final touch, students could tear a few dots of yellow paper and glue them to the center of their paper poinsettias. Students could place the red leaves over or in-between the green leaves. We found out it was easier to glue the green leaves first. Students created odd numbers of red and green leaves, arranged them, then glued them to the 9″x12″ construction paper using a glue stick. Students observe poinsettias and create a collage using red and green paper.

Organic shapes in art