I'll be honest and say that when I was growing up and even through my college career as an art major, I never used to appreciate abstract art.  I always thought it was kinda pointless and silly.  Over the last few years though, I've really learned to love it.  The more I learn about it, the more I appreciate it and I've found that it's a style of artwork that is super fun and expressive to make and kids love it too.  It's a great way to be free and uncritical of oneself while creating!

I've been doing abstract artwork with Pre-K, Kindergarten,1st and 2nd graders and just having the best time teaching it.  Each grade has used a different process and different materials.  The basic goal is to do lots of layers of lines, shapes, and colors to build up an aesthetically pleasing piece of artwork that was super fun to make.  

​Enjoy these photos of the process and final work. 

This is my new favorite Kindergarten art project and it only took three 30 minute art classes!

We began this colorful project by learning about abstract art.  When I explain abstract art to the younger grades, I tell them that it is art with lots of lines, colors and shapes but nothing recognizable.  There is no cat or house, etc.  I was proud to hear that after this first class, students were using markers to create abstract art in their classroom during free time.  The first day of this project, students used lots of warm colors like yellow, pink and orange to fill their paper with color.  They used tempera paints and different tools such as sponge brushes, stamps, marker caps, cardboard scraps, etc to create a colorful abstract painting.  The second day, they did the same thing but used cool colors such as blue, turquoise and green and added layers of patterns on top of the warm colors.  They were instructed to just have fun and experiment.  

On the third day of class, we added a black tree silhouette on top of our abstract paintings.  I demonstrated what a silhouette is by having a student stand in front of a window and then turning off the light so they were heavily backlit by the sun, creating a dark silhouette of the students body.  
I also showed them how to paint trees by first painting a large tall triangle in the middle of the paper and adding big branches reaching to the sky.  Then they added little branches reaching to the sky off of the big branches.  Watching the students paint these trees was really magical as if seeing their artwork really come to life.  

​I absolutely LOVE how this art project turned out and am proud of the students for being so exploratory and brave as they tried new things in the art room. 

I was exploring the wonderful world of Pinterest a while ago and came across this awesome blog post smART class: Hip Hop Kandinsky murals and was super excited about the project.  I took direct inspiration from this super fun project.  I decided to take it into my own hands and do a similar project with my 2nd graders.

 After looking at and discussing the artwork by Kandinsky, 2nd grade students were paired up or put into groups of three to create a painting together.  The students had to really focus on collaboration and working as a team.  Each time we began with a new color, they had to talk to each other about a few places to paint with that color.  We also talked about being accepting of the others' choices with painting even if it might not be the same as theirs.  Every five minutes or so, I had them rotate the paper (poster board) so that they were constantly looking at it from different angles and painting along their partners painting.
The students said they had never did art with another person before and loved it.

The students started on white paper and began painting with black lines. We talked about what abstract means and to draw lines, shapes, and designs rather than things like cats, houses, and trees.
After using the black, students in one class added red, yellow, and blue. The other class used red, yellow and purple.  This was mostly so that the two classes artwork was slightly different.

We spent three 45 minute class periods working on these.  Once finished, I put them all together and the students discussed what they found interesting and fun about this project.  

"It's neat how we all had to follow the same directions, but they all turned out really different."

"When they are all next to each other, they look like one big giant painting instead of a bunch of small paintings."