Colorful Kandinsky Circles

Hi everyone, and thanks for checking back with me here at the Art Spot!

This weekend was a busy one with our Art at the Mall show, so I'm a little late in getting this post up about what my 2nd graders have been up to!  If you'd like to see pictures of our art show, click on "Displaying Art" in the column to the right!

2nd graders at Grand View, East, and West have been learning about Russian painter Wassily Kansinsky.  Kandinsky was one of the first artists to paint in an Abstract way.  Abstract means that there are no recognizable objects in the picture, and instead are just a combination of colors, lines, and shapes. Kandinsky loved to experiment with mixing colors, and one of his most famous paintings was made of all different colors painted in circle patterns!

Here's a pic of that painting:

Concentric Circles, Wassily Kandinsky

We started these paintings by dividing our papers into smaller squares.  To do this easily without using rulers, we simply folded our papers in half the long way, then in half again the short way, and once more the short way.  When we unfolded our papers we had eight smaller squares!  Then we drew a small circle in the center of each of those squares, we drew a larger circle around the small circles, and finally one more even bigger circle around those!  Each square now looked like it had a target in the center of it!

Now it was time to paint.  Each student got only 3 colors to use for painting.  These were the Primary colors, blue, red, and yellow.  Then we mixed these colors together to make 3 more colors!  These were the Secondary colors, orange, purple, and green.

Finally I gave students black and white to mix tints and shades.  Tints are colors mixed with white.  Shades are colors mixed with black.

Here are some of the wonderful results!

Bulletin board display at Grand View

Thanks for joining me here at the Art Spot and for checking out the 2nd graders beautiful Kandinsky inspired circle paintings!

-Miss O'Donnell