In the style of Henrique Matos

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A4 size


2. liquid water colour


3. jar with water


4. compasses


5. ruler


6. pencil


7. black waterproof markers

Henrique José Teixeira Matos is a Portugese painter. He is born in 1961 in Oporto.  Matos painted landscapes, portraits and abstract works, but is best known for his op-art work.

Show pictures of Matos's work on Wikimedia Commons. Look especially the op-art works and discuss what you see.



More op-art lessons on this blog can be seen following the link Op-art.



Paint a white sheet of paper with liquid watercolour and a lot of water a plain background.

Drip some liquid water colour on the surface while it is still wet. Use more water if the colours won't flow. Leave the sheet to dry.

Use compasses to draw some small circles (2 cm average) on the sheet. Draw wider circkels around them. Fill the sheet with those circles and half ones near the edges.

Draw lines from the middle of the circles to the edges. Be sure it's an even number of lines and  Kkeep the lines as much as possible equidistant from each other. Color the squares alternating with a black marker or pencil.

By a student of grade 5, coloured with pencil

Tumbling blocks

Even though I'm not a fan of colouring pages, this one was a hit in my classroom!

You need:

1. printed sheet with tumbling blocks
2. markers

I downloaded a sheet with tumbling blocks on Incompetech, a site full of free downloadable graph papers. Students had to choose three colours markers to colour the blocks. When finished, cut the drawing and paste it on a coloured background.

Wavy waves

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A4 size
2. markers
3. coloured paper for background
4. glue
5. scissors

Draw on a white sheet with pencil four wavy lines from left to right.

Then draw five wavy lines from top to bottom.

Draw a cross of slightly wavy lines in each square.

Choose three colours and colour the triangles: one colour for the bottom triangles of the squares, another colour for the left triangles and a third colour for the triangles on the right. The upper triangle in a square is always white. This is the foamy head of the wave!

Cut a slightly wavy line on the left, right and bottom of the drawing. Cut a strip of the upper triangles away. Paste the work 'wavy' on a coloured sheet.

Op art cube

Made by students of 12 years old

You need:

1. white drawing sheet 21 by 29 cm
2. pencil
3. ruler
4. markers
5. glue

Give students a copied print of a cube, or let them make their own. I did it with a guided instruction.

1. Lay the sheet in front of you with the small side up.
2. Draw a dot on top of the sheet on 7 and 14 cm.
3. Do the same on the bottom of the sheet.
4. Connect the lines from top to bottom.
5. Draw dots on the right site of the sheet on 7, 14, 21 and 28 cm starting at the top of the sheet.
6. Do the same on the left site of the sheet.
7. Connect the dots with lines. You have 12 squares on your sheet now, and three small rectangles on the bottom (picture 1).

Picture 1

8. Number the squares very thin with a pencil from left to right.
9. Draw a cross in square 1, 3, 4, 5, 10 en 12 (picture 2).

Picture 2

10. Draw edges to the sides of square 2 and 5. Draw this line 1 cm from the edges.
11. Draw edges to the three sides of square 11.
12. Draw a cross in the remaining narrow strips at the bottom of the sheet (picture 3).

Picture 3

Draw six different styles of optical illusions on the six sides of the cube. Colour them with markers and outline with fine black marker.

Cut the cube and paste the sides together.

Op art line design 2: garlic cloves!

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A5 size
2. fine marker
3. coloured paper for background

Draw little dots on the sheet and link them together with curved lines. Draw more and more lines, following the first one. Looks like garlic cloves!

Op art line design

With colour pencils

All credits for this lesson are for Mr. Ted Edinger. He has a good description of this lesson on his artblog, so I need only to display the results of my students.

You need:

1. drawing sheet A5 size
2. colour pencils
3. black fine marker

Please look at Art with Mr. E. for the full description of this lesson and a step by step guide to get these beautiful results!

Drawn and coloured with markers, by a student of 12 years old

Op art in complementary colours

You need:

1. drawing paper 14 by 14 cm
2. ruler
3. pencil
4. piece of cardboard, 6 by cm
5. markers
6. black paper for background
7. scissors
8. glue

Check during the introduction of this lesson what students already know about primary and secundary colours. What are the primary colours? How do you make secondary colours out of them?

Show a picture of the colour circle and tell about complementary colours: the colours who are opposite to eachother in the colour circle. Blue and orange, yellow and purple, greed and red.

Divide the drawing sheet in four squares of 7 by 7 cm. Cut a shape from a piece of cardboard and trace it four times in the squares. Draw vertical lines with a pencil with 1 cm between them. Colour the shapes and backgrounds like a checkerboard with complementary colours and one in black and white.
Cut the squares and paste them on a black sheet.

Help, my name disappears!

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A4 size
2. ruler
3. compasses
4. markers

In this lesson one point perspective is combined with an optical illusion.

Place the paper horizontally. Draw a small dot on the right side of the sheet, about half way. Take a ruler and draw five lines from the dot to the left side of the sheet.Draw five lines from the dot to the top of the paper and five lines to the bottom. Use a compass to draw increasing circles around the dot until the sheet is full.

Draw your name in blockletters between the lines; use the width of three blocks. Make the letters threedimensional by drawing shadows on the left sides and undersides.

Colour the front of the letters. Colour the shadows with a darker colour. Colour the blocks alternately with two colours, like a checker board. You may also use one colour and leave the resting blocks white. Outline the letters with a fine marker to be sure letters will really pop out of the sheet.

Opart like Vaserely

You need:

1. white paper
2. markers
3. ruler and pencil
4. charcoal

Show the children works from Victor Vasarely. What do you see? Do you recognize the optical illusion? How did Vasarely make this? Do you see the shapes coming out from the background? What colours and shapes has been used? We call this opart or optical art.
Tell children they are going to make an opart drawing today. Every child becomes a white sheet of paper and starts with outlining one or more round objects like a lid or a dish. Draw curved lines from above to below and from the right to the left.

Draw a grid pattern behind the circle with squares from 1,5 to 1,5 cm. Teach children how to do this, it appeared not to be that easy...:)

When finished, colour the squares in the circle like a checkerboard.
1. Go slow and think first, a mistake is easily made.
2. No two colours should be right next to eachother (side to side)
3. Colours should always be corner to corner with eachother

To accentuate depth, we used a piece of charcoal and drew a shadow around the ball.