Hip Hop Kandinsky Murals!

This year I have been trying to teach the kids to draw BIG and understand some elements of art that will help their composition look more interesting.

For this project we talked about murals and their social, cultural, and historical significance and impact on society.

We also talked about the artist, Wassily Kandinsky and looked at some of his paintings.

We talked about 8 important things: (I have a big poster with this list on my wall.)

1. Overlapping

2. Repeating Shapes (geometric and organic)

3.Shapes inside of shapes

4.line (follow the leader lines)

5. colors

6. Things that run off the edge of the paper

7. 3-D shapes

8. shapes and background areas that are filled in and some that are open

Then we watched this video clip on youtube and I would pause it to point out the things on our list..

There are LOTS more REALLY AWESOME videos on this facebook pagehttp://www.youtube.com/user/RinpaEshidan

Students made drawings using all of the things on the list….heres a few

Then students voted with their table group on one artwork to make a mural with. They used parts of the other ones that they liked as well.

Then they started painting with black paint..I did a group one with the younger ones..

This project allowed for a great lesson in communication. Kids had to talk to each other about which parts to paint, what color, and who did what. This was a challenge for some!

The next class, students chose two colors to add to their murals. They could use different values (dark and light) of each color. They had to leave some parts white. These are third and fourth grade. Fifth grade has some beautiful ones in the works that I will post when they finish.