Lava Lamp

                                     

Fall 2025 Advanced Art Students at Mineola High School 

4 THINGS TO NOTICE:

-Form of lamp is symmetrical

-The cap and base are shiny/metal:

showing highlights with value in correct direction.

-Blobs are 3D-ROUND with lighter area at bottom and darker area on top.

-Sometimes, Glass has a white highlight

Watch it in Action

How does this happen?

It's Science...

GROOVY SCIENCE 

Convection and convection currents describe the process where heated, less dense fluids (like air or water, rise, while cooler, denser fluids sink.creating a continuous cycle of circulation that transfers heat. This natural phenomenon drives significant Earth processes, such as weather patterns like wind and storms, ocean circulation, and the movement of tectonic plates through mantle convection.

How Convection Currents Work

1. Heating and Expansion: When a part of a fluid is heated, its particles move faster and spread apart, becoming less dense.
2. Rising: This warmer, less dense fluid rises to the surface.
3. Cooling and Sinking: As the fluid rises, it cools, becoming denser again.
4. Cycle: The cooler, denser fluid then sinks, creating a continuous cycle of rising and falling fluid known as a convection current.

Various Forms of Lamp

Create a shape for your lamp. 

It should be symmetrical, have a top cap, bottom base, and glass bottle middle. 

What color combo do you want to use? 

The light comes from the bottom of the lamp base, so consider this when color blending and using value. 

UNIQUE DESIGN IDEAS

Challenge your creativity by transforming your wax blobs into shapes, objects, or letters. 

Each student must creatively problem solve by choosing

the paper and medium they want to make their idea come to life. 

CRITERIA:

-LAMP FORM (25 points)

Symmetrical and filling up space

Show entire lamp (not cut off).

*hint- you can make a stencil from other paper, 

folding in the middle to make it symmetrical. 

-VALUE ON CAP/BASE (25 points)

Make metal top and bottom appear shiny with contour line. 

D, M, and L areas.

3D MELTED WAX BLOBS (25 points)

-Round, color blended, same light source on all (bottom of lamp).

At least 3. 

CREATIVE BACKGROUND (25 points)

-Ideas- color blending, radiating lines, blobs in background, 

outer space, still life.

*the more space you fill with lamp, the less BG you will have to do. 

YOUR CHOICE OF MEDIUMS-

marker, colored pencil, crayon, watercolor, oil pastel. 

Colored or white paper.

-SHINE ON GLASS (optional)

-Glass has a white highlight from surrounding lights, 

unless the lights around lamp are off. 

Watercolor Blog Paintings

 

This assignment was thought of after studying the concept of a vintage paint by number.

Looking up close at a paint by number feels like you are looking at a camouflage design!  

Seeing small sections at a time, you only see blobs of connected colors...

Then as you see the bigger picture, you see how those "blobs" are connected to a grander design. 

THE ASSIGNMENT

DRAW

On this assignment, I have the kids pencil draw a design of something in nature. I like to collect old landscape magazines or calendars for this project. 

 COLOR

After the design is drawn out, the students use washable markers to sketchily color in the scene. You color the areas in somewhat messily but still staying in contour with the picture. It is also good to mix in colors in the same family with each other. For example, if the sky is blue... find a variety of blue markers to make sketchy horizontal lines all over sky area. 

WATER PAINT

 After marker is competed, artist will use a wet brush to water down each section at a time of the paper. The point here is to blend some colors together to create new ones. Be careful, You do not want to overblend where it makes one monotonous color.

TRACE

Use a black marker to trace around all areas of color that were created. These traced "blobs" should each contain only ONE color. If there is more than one color in one blob, further make blobs in that blob. 

You can click on the below images to see bigger details...

Alexis's Fish

Brooke B's Blossom

Ty's Bird Skittles

Ian's Mountain Scape

Angel's Monument

Ashton's Tree Trunk Sunset

Todd's Sunrise

Hugo's Volcano

Shanna's Empty Fish Bowl

Nick Pearson's yellow flower field

 

 

Trent's Cabin by the woods

 

Hector's Sunset Silhouette

Veronica's Final

Veronica's After the Water

Haley's Rose Water

 

Hailey's Before the water...

INsert Hailey's after watercolor here.....

 BTW.. you do not have to get intricate with the lines like this. Hailey went a little far with her beautiful lines that it broke her heart to water over them. Your maker strokes can be broad and messy bending with the contour of the area you are filling in.