Painting to Music

My fourth and final course this summer focused on using shapes, colors and lines to create a design. The inspiration for these designs come from music, an so the artist for this project is Wassily Kandinsky. The kids enjoyed listening to the music while painting. When discussing Kandinsky's work I helped the students understand the connection from this work to previous projects by recalling other paintings we studied. Then I showed them Kandinsky's abstract design and asked them what this was a picture of. Many children, without any help from me, said that they saw musical instruments. I then expanded on their observations by explaining that Kandinsky used music to influence his design. I explained that we would listen to different styles of music and paint to each song. I also tried to get the children to focus on colors that work with different sounds. For example if the music is light and playful we might use bright colors. The students are free to let their brushes do the dancing. They can paint an image that comes to mind or simply play around with colors and shapes to create something abstract. When the paintings are finished we can compare the different styles of music by putting paintings side by side.