Haring figures, complementary colors

Keith Haring's symbolic figures are a great subject matter for my 4th graders, who learn about gesture drawing, color schemes, and value in the first unit. His work is so relatable because his figures show no gender, age, race - they could be anyone! This lesson hits so many standards, and the kids love posing for each other and making gesture drawings, which we made contour lines around to make them resemble Haring's figures. We selected a pair of complementary colors and mixed tints and shades for the backgrounds - I really like the painterly backgrounds with the crisp figures on top, and the gray paper behind it all really shows off the colors better than white.