Wassily Kandinsky was a very well known abstract artist yet, he did not even start out as an artist.  He actually was a lawyer and first and did not begin studying art until he was about 30years old. ( Proof that you CAN teach old dogs new tricks.)

Kandinsky started painting  after the impressionists and was the first artist to actually move away from any form of realism in his pictures.

He painted pure design, concentrating on color and design, which he felt had meaning in themselves.

He was a musician as well as an artist and thought of complex paintings as symphonies.

Children can start following some of Kandinsky’s style fo course by first vewing some of his work.

A great first activity would be to listen to music and paint to the music itself using bright watercolors, or bright tempra if that is what you have.

Choose  a piece of music that is not boring and let the children lie  quietly and listen to it without moving. Then play it  a second time.

The third time give the children paintbrushes and paint and let them paint to the music You can pick a piece of music that has very different sounds in it. Make sure it is not a long piece as the children will have no patience to listen to anything too long.

After the children are done you should discuss with them how the music made them feel and how that translated into the movements they made on their papers.

The truth is I have seen this activity done with other drawing materials as well. The thing that would make it Kandinsky like here would be to use watercolors  or pure bright colors ( which was  something common in  Kandinsky’s work) and to just let the children create design with no end idea in mind.

I found some other activities on another art blog that are great additions to creating some more of Kandinsky type art work for children.

If you have never seen any of Kandinsky’s work you can easily find more about him online but just check out some of Kandinskys work to get an idea of what you can expect from the children.

I happen to love Kandinsky because aside from the fact that I love his colors and designs, for children it is great as his work is in museums, sells for high prices and yet any child can feel that they could easily do what he does.

What a confidence builder.

(I don’t know how he himself would feel about that though.)