Kandinsky Inspired Abstract Painting

First grade artists were introduced to the artist Wassily Kandinsky. I shared the book, "The Noisy Paintbox" written by Barb Rosenstock.
I appreciate the rich language and artwork in this book, though some of the vocabulary is beyond the 1st grade lexicon, it can be adapted for the younger set. For example, when the word cobalt is used, I say, "Cobalt Blue". Just so my kids, have some bearing on what is being communicated.

We discussed the lines, shapes and colors of his paintings and how they were named using musical words.

Students offered their interpretations of his paintings and then set to work creating paintings using red, yellow, and turquoise crayola tempera paint. I encouraged them to work with yellow first, then red, then turquoise, mixing colors directly on their paper. They rediscovered/remembered that these colors create orange, purple, and green...the secondary colors. Last,  they used black to create final details. I did give some guidance in asking them to paint 2 shapes with yellow paint, 2 lines with red, and 2 more shapes with blue. They could make any shapes or lines they wished.

 

Of course, I made sure to play some Tchaikovsky while they painted! 

The goal was to review primary and secondary color mixing and use lines, shapes and colors to create an abstract painting inspired by Wassily Kandinksy. Here are their results!

What I discovered is my students began to mix complementary colors to create neutral tones and were saying, "I made brown! I made a golden color!" They were so excited about the range of hues they were able to make by just mixing the primary colors. Each painting was unique. 

Thanks for reading!