Recently Seattle Pacific University adopted a general education curriculum built around the student writing experience, in which students are required to learn to write within the context of a specific discipline in their first year. A first-year course in chemistry writing poses a pedagogical challenge, because understanding professional scientific writing requires multiple years of study. This challenge was addressed in the class described here by focusing on the chemical analysis of color in art. Historical examples ranged from reconstructing the synthesis of Egyptian blue pigment to detecting a lost Van Gogh painting that the artist had painted over. Student learning outcomes included reading and writing about the history of colors in art and pigment analysis, making their own pigments in the lab, then using those pigments to create paintings.

Students progressed through four experiences at the interdisciplinary interface of art, archaeology, and chemistry:

• 1.)
  They learned how pigments were made in different historical eras, and how artworks and artifacts are analyzed with chemical techniques;
• 2.)
  They analyzed the color palette of an artwork of their choice in CIELAB space (using the online GENI-ACT platform to facilitate authentic research in the classroom);
• 3.)
  They synthesized, separated, and tested red, yellow, green, and/or blue pigments in five laboratory sessions; and
• 4.)
  They used those pigments to create their own artwork at the end of the course.

This final paper and the student-created artwork constituted substantial, tangible outcomes that demonstrated the students’ ability to read about, contextualize, analyze, and even create art.