Kandinsky Trees

For this project, we took a look at some artwork by Wassily Kandsinky. Mr. Kandinsky was a Russian painter who was one of the first people to ever paint abstractly/non-representationally. He was largely influenced by music due to his synesthesia. Synesthesia is a condition in which one of your senses becomes activated due to the stimulation of another sense. So when Kandinsky heard music, he would oftentimes see colors and vice versa. 

Four different classes said that I looked like Mr. Kandsinky. I guess that I found my doppelganger!

This is the work of art that we based our trees on.

We started off the project making our background. Students used sponges to sponge paint the grass green. They then used marker caps to print small circles in the sky. The next class, we took a piece of paper and created patterns on it using oil pastels. Then we painted over our patterns in black and used combs and other paint scrapers to scrape designs into the paint. This makes the oil pastel colors pop against the black paint. They then cut a tree trunk and branches out of the black piece of paper. For the last part of the project, the students created concentric circles as leaves for their tree. This was good practice cutting circles for the kiddos. I think they spent three consecutive classes cutting their circles. Overall, I'm really happy with how these turned out!