Ink Blowing!

Every other Friday, the high school art classes are treated with "Fun Friday." Fun Friday introduces art students to new and interesting mediums that they might not be exposed to otherwise. For this Fun Friday, we experimented with ink blowing and watercolors. The students' art turned out to be very complex, colorful, and Kandinsky-esque. I've put and example of a Kandinsky painting at the end of this post (he was a famous Russian abstract painter).

And here's a work by Kandinsky (see some similarities?):

6th Grade Abstract Landscapes

This year, the sixth grade learned about Wassily Kandinsky's landscape paintings. Kandinsky was a Russian Abstract Expressionist painter. We looked at examples of his work (below) and spent multiple class periods debating the artist's intentions.

 

For this painting, students debated whether Kandinsky was trying to paint an inviting landscape or a scary one. Students had to explain why they thought it was scary/inviting. The question I posed was, "Do you want to visit this house? Why or why not?"

 

For this painting, students debated weather the landscape has a stream or a road, and whether the composition is inviting (and why). They really got into this one. Pretty heated arguments!

 

And below you can find the students' abstract landscape paintings. Students were only provided with primary colors and black and white. I think they did a great job of blending, color mixing, and showing a range of values!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FYI this is a man holding onto to a cup and a bowl to prevent himself from being sucked out into the universe. Yes, you read that correctly.

 

 

Cool paper-towel texture technique!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kandinsky Landscapes

 

This year, sixth grade artists studied Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian-born Abstract Expressionist. We talked a lot about what the words "Abstract" and "Expressionism" mean. I have to say I was extremely impressed with their ability to define and give examples of these complex art terms.

For this project, we also learned a lot about color. We talked about warm and cool colors, and also learned about color idioms ("I'm seeing red," "I'm feeling blue," etc.), why we use them, and why they make sense. Students then chose a mood to express with color. An eerie mood, for example, might require different color choices than a happy or excited mood.

Here are some of my students' beautiful, abstract landscapes.

 

 

 

 

 

 PS: This project idea came from the wonderful art blog, Arte a Scoula.