My older kids learned about Mondrian at CHILL, the now-defunct local homeschool co op we belonged to a few years back. But the younger kids didn't know about him, so when I came across a mention of his work in something I was reading, an idea began to percolate in the back of my mind.
What about a pastel version?
After showing the kids images of Mondrian's works online, I explained that we would be choosing 3 colors for our paint, and a fourth color for our lines to do our projects.
The kids mixed white into our regular paints to create pastel colors.
We used a ruler to draw random lines across our papers in both directions.
Then we painted in some of the resulting squares and triangles.
Some of the kids understood the goal better than others. Looking at the pictures, I think we could have added more white to most of the colors we made.
The following day, when our paintings were nice and dry, each artist chose a color from our selection of masking tapes to make the thick, Mondrian-esque lines.
This was a fun and easy project, but I learned that I could have provided some additional guidance to make things go more smoothly. Next time around, I'll limit the number of lines the children draw, and be sure to suggest that they keep them at least ruler's width apart from each other. I'll also make the paint colors lighter so they don't "bleed through" the light colored tape. And finally, I'll instruct the children to use strips of tape the entire length or width of their paper and trim the excess from the edges after the project is complete.
Still, this was a fun project, and hopefully when they see the works of Piet Mondrian they'll remember who he was.
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