Mondrian Masterpieces.

I don't often repeat projects, but when I do, it's usually because I heart them big time.  And this is one of those favorites.

For step by steps on this one, check it out here.  Since having a baby artist in the house, I'm loving process-y art and projects that give children more of an option in terms of color choices and media.

My Kinder artists loved reading Perfect Square and really knocked our study of Mondrian's artwork out of the art park.  Our art smart focus words were "repetition," "blending," and "outline." We focused on his Broadway Boogie Woogie (1943) and listened to boogie woogie as we worked, thank you Pandora.

 

 

I took an incredible amount of pics, but just couldn't get enough.  I seriously wish I could tape them on me and wear all the time.  Keep boogie woogie-n' arties!

Mondrian Masterpieces.

My Kinder artists finally finished up our Mondrian paintings I had started blogging about here.  And can I just say...I want to frame them ALLLLL.

After reading Michael Hall's Perfect Square and studying many examples of Mondrian's works, the children had to pick and stick with one chosen shape.

I pre-cut large circles, triangles, squares, and rectangles for the kids to use as a tracer.  After they traced their chosen large shape with a black crayon, they drew their same shape again and again and again...

During our next class, we dug into our tempera cakes making sure our brushes were very GLAD (not sad) the whole time.

When my Kinders are painting, I like to remind them to dip, dip, wipe, wipe, then DOT, DOT into the paint.  It helps them to keep the paints clean, plus I love hearing them cheer out loud to "dip, dip, wipe, wipe, dot, dot" in their little voices.

After painting with tempera paints, students were in charge of picking out oil pastels to accent their paintings.  We discussed complementary and analogous colors on our color wheel to figure out what colors would POP in our paintings.

I can't get enough of these colors and want to wallpaper my entire Art Room with these paintings.  Mondrian-a-licious!

I Like My Crayons Naked.

Today, we kicked off a Kinder lesson on Piet Mondrian.  We read Perfect Square by Michael Hall, which is a beautiful story about one square with unlimited possibilities.

The Kinder kiddos loved looking at images of Mondrian's impressionistic-looking work before his style was transformed forever into the pieces we recognize today.  

Before:

Trees Along a River, 1907-1908

As Mondrian continued to paint such naturescapes, he realized more and more how everything around us is made up of basic shapes and primary colors.  After this realization, his work truly began to shift.

After:

Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930

The young artists started with one tracer of either a square, circle, or triangle, but had to PICK and STICK with whatever shape they selected from the very beginning.  So, if a student chose a square tracer, that was their one and only shape of the day.

After getting their papers, the Kindergarteners had to pick a black crayon from the teacher table and walk back to their seats to get tracing.  I noticed one little girl was still hanging around my teacher table and when I walked over to her, I noticed she was quickly peeling off her crayon paper.

Kinder:  (giggling embarrassedly)  Sorry, Miss D, but I like my crayons naked.

BEST QUOTE EVER.  In fact, that belongs on a t-shirt.

Here are our masterpieces in progress below:

I have an inkling these are going to be pretty Mondrian-licious when they are done.  Naked crayons and all.