Trends Modern Art

Oh em gee. It's been a while since I posted something. But don't be troubled...I have lots of goodies up my sleeve.

Kandinsky! A wonderful artist from Russia who created art of pure abstraction. He was inspired by things such as jazz music and nature and from that inspiration stemmed creations that held no definitive subject matter or logical reasoning. Just color, shape, line, movement and feeling...Abstraction Expressionism was born.

I decided to focus on Kandinsky's Squares with Concentric Rings. This is a fun project that doesn't entail alot of planning and supplies and the best part--it's not as messy as painting. Don't mind me, that is just a tender spot for me today....after painting in a classroom with fifteen elementary school kids and no sink nearby--no fun!

• Hand out 9 X12 sheet of drawing paper, canson paper or poster board. You will also need glue sticks, oil pastels and scrapbooking paper squares in multiple colors.
• Instruct the students to glue down six squares in a grid of three across. The squares should be the same uniform size and they should vary in color.
• Get to tearing! That's right, we tore the scrapbooking paper into rough looking circles. No scissors involved in this project. They should tear smaller circles to fit in the larger circle and then get sequentially smaller.
  
• Each square should have at least three circles on it, varying in size and color.
• Glue them all down on the paper, creating interesting patterns of color and shape.
• After circles are glued down, the students can use 2-3 different oil pastel colors and make contrasting circle shapes on top of their collages.

This was one of those projects where I could have just sat there for days, tearing scrapbooking paper and enjoying life. The students enjoyed it and it was fun to see the uniqueness of each project, given the parameters.