Kandinsky inspired art projects

Here in Nashville, it is Artober- a monthlong celebration of all things arty around town.  It's a lot of fun.  In our schools, we chose Wassily Kandinsky as a focus artist (he has an AMAZING retrospective exhibit at The Frist Center for the Visual Arts right now).  Here are some of my 3rd and 4th grade responses to his work. 

3rd Grade- we used Kandinsky's concentric circles as inspiration to create these amazing circle weavings.   I have the students plug the hole in the middle with a button for a couple of reasons.  It's cute.  Also, the center of the weaving is often filled with the most mistakes, since it's the beginning, and by the time we get to the edges, the kiddos are much better weavers.  It's a nice way to finish it.  I hot glued the weavings to mat board, and had the kids decorate the edges with colored sharpies.  It allowed for some element of choice in a pretty regimented project.

 

 



4th Grade- Little more complicated.  We looked at a variety of Kandinsky's landscapes from the more realistic to the mostly abstract, discussing how lines and colors can represent a feeling or an object.  I played Vivaldi's 4 seasons, and students sketched lines to each seasonal song.  From there, students created a circle, and divided it into 4 sections, and each section was to represent a season.  I had them use cray-pas to color, and we attempted some blending with baby oil.  This was hard.  Some had a difficult time with the idea of blending.  They wanted to just keep mixing the colors.  Others just colored as usual and put oil on top.  It proved to be a difficult concept that I'm going to have to keep working on.  But, in the end, there were some really great attempts.  Abstract was also a hard concept to teach to the students, I acknowledged that our brains naturally want to "file" everything we see into a definite category; we want to know what something is. And, we just kept trying and adapting.

Abstract Surprises

I was supposed to teach my 3rd graders about abstract art this 9 weeks.  It was supposed to involve paint.  And, I don't know- maybe it was their behavior (not very motivated, sassy a lot of the time, and  downright mean sometimes) or, the end of the year crazies- I just couldn't focus in on a project that I wanted to go the distance with.  I gave each student a piece of sturdy paper, and the cheap masking tape that doesn't stick to anything.  I instructed them to create a flower, or growth out of tape on their paper.  Then, we sponged watercolors over it, and removed the tape (after talking about resist).  Of course, when the tape was removed, the shape left behind was not exactly what they intended (positive/negative space discussion).  I gave markers out, and had them fill in the white space with designs and patterns.  I think they turned out pretty cool, and I am wondering if maybe this project has a place in my future plans-

Monets in Training

Years ago, I wrote a grant, and got table easels and canvases for the kiddos.  We went outside and painted, and it was a lot of fun.  Since then, I've made the canvas painting an annual tradition for 4th graders.  They puzzle over the easels as they move from Kindergarten up to 4th grade, waiting for their time to use them.  The project varies from year to year, but the canvas/easel painting has become a rite of passage for my 4th graders.  This year, we looked at the work of Monet, and discussed how he layered his colors, and how he did not draw first.  We started our canvases by using cool colors and white, to fill in a background with brushstrokes, mixed colors, and floral shapes.  The next step will be to use warm colors to add in butterflies and dragonflies- but shhhh- don't tell the kiddos- they don't know yet.  And, hopefully, if we hold it all together and keep up the good work we've started, we'll use black paint to add some structure lines.

3rd Grade-Real/Abstract

Each 3rd grader had to make 4 paintings or drawings. One realistic, and 3 abstract in some way. They chose their realistic, and their best abstract to turn in. This allowed some personal choice, and some criticism skills to enter into the lesson. We looked at Christo, Picasso, Warhol, Duchamp and Franz Marc to see a wide span of abstract art.