Saturday, March 6, 2010

Mondrian-Inspired Paper Pictures

I got the idea for this project from Sheila Wilkins, Sunset Hill Elementary School.  I saw the Mondrian Boogie Woogie project in their Artsonia gallery (check it out, they have a lot of great ideas!)  You can read more about Piet Mondrian here: http://www.pietmondrian.org//

This was a Kindergarten project.  First, I showed the students a PowerPoint about Mondrian.  We described, analyzed, interpreted, and judged the artwork.  We focused on the elements used to make the composition: lines, shapes, primary colors.  There was a lot of great Art vocabulary in this project:
Line- Horizontal, Vertical
Shape- Square, Rectangle, Geometric
Color- Primary, Red, Yellow, Blue, Black, White
Abstract
Composition

I threw in a few parodies of Mondrian's paintings to get the students more excited and showed them the artwork made by the SHE students.  On the second day, I put pre-cut construction paper (primary colored squares and rectangles and long black strips for lines) at each table and showed the students how to practice arranging the shapes to make a composition and glue them in place.  I explained to the students that we were using the same elements as Mondrian but making unique pictures with them.  I learned that it worked better to tell the students to start with one shape of each color and THEN they could add more.  I also made sure that some of the white paper showed and checked the practice compositions before giving the students a glue stick.  Some students still ended up with like 5 layers of paper but they enjoyed the project and I was really pleased with the bold results.


This is a spider :)




This was created by a 3rd grade student, much more intricate.


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