Look! It's Blue Dog vs. Blue Rider

"Prussian Blue" was the name of a Crayola crayon in my sixty-four crayon set as a young artist. I never did get a real clear understanding of "Prussian", and I was not alone. Binney and Smith changed the crayon name to "Midnight Blue".

But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no
Not gonna let them catch the midnight rider.

Learning to read in Mrs. Erickson's first grade class was a joy back in the fall of '61. We learned to read and write the name of a new color every few days. Red was first. We also learned to read "Look". When we learned to write "Look" we turned the o's into eyes, complete with eyelashes. Being able to read the labels on my crayons was a big thrill, and I'm delighted to report my young students still get just as excited when they reach that milestone.

But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no
Not gonna let them catch the midnight rider.

Franz Marc is one of my dad's favorite artists. I grew up with reproductions of Marc's horses and deer. Marc was one of the "Blue Rider" group of artists that included Wassily Kandinsky, August Macke, Paul Klee, and a few others. Both Marc and Macke were killed in WWI, bringing the Blue Rider group to a premature end.

But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no
Not gonna let them catch the midnight rider.

I wanted the students to consider movement or action in a painting. Marc's paintings have wonderful curves and overlapped shapes that move the viewer's eye around the painting. His bold, symbolic use of color sings.

The bad news is kids are totally intimidated at the thought of drawing a horse. So are adults and some art teachers! After the first day on this lesson, I had to change it. First we compared George Rodrigue's "Blue Dog" paintings to Franz Marc's "Blue Horses". We all pretty much agreed that Blue Dog has tension and interest, but no movement. A few kids want to know how Blue Dog moves between the pages of my book, Blue Dog Man. They have figured out that I'm not showing them nearly all the pages in the book, and they suspect Blue Dog goes crazy chasing cats and cars on the omitted pages. I suspect Blue Dog just goes by taxi downtown to stare at the ceiling from his psychoanalyst's couch.



Kids like the crazy colors in Franz Marc's paintings--red horses with blue manes, yellow horses with green manes, red deer and yellow dogs in white snow, a parade of blue monkeys. We look at "Cows: Yellow, Red, and Green," and I tell them that I believed that picture was the cow jumping over the moon when I was their age. It's easier for them to accept jumping yellow cows than me ever having been their age!


A perfect union of Blue Dog and Blue Rider!


The hills are alive with the sound of music.


I love the eye in the underwater cave, the scorpion, the happy turtle,

...the smiling swamp monster, and the pirate ship. The next one reminds me so much of watching the bats fly out from under Austin's Congress Avenue bridge last April! The one below pleases me greatly as a teacher, because it is the painting of a first grade boy on his own after we had completed the directed assignment. He was obviously applying everything we had learned:



How sweet it is!

Now it's time to pop the Allman Brothers in the cd player.