Process Art: Wassily Kandinsky Artist Study

Artist studies with young children are all about exploring new techniques and mediums, and are so aligned with process-focused art experiences! It’s not about recreating an exact replica of an artist’s work, but about representing our own ideas about the pieces we study. 

During this artist study, we looked closely at the work of Wassily Kandinsky. Kandinsky was a Russian artist often credited as one of the pioneers of abstract art. He believed that colors, shapes, and lines could express emotions and ideas without needing to represent real-world objects. His work encouraged artists to explore creativity through visual elements rather than realistic images.

When children take the time to get closer to Kandinsky's work, they may take notice of the shapes, patterns, colors, and lines he famously used. Focusing on this combination of elements, we enter into a process-focused artist study. 

We started with Discovery Circles in various sizes and used a warm color palette of red, orange, and magenta tempera paints. Tempera paints are usually washable and very child friendly! 

I love to choose a color palette in advance and tend to offer a few analogous colors (these are the colors that are next to each other on the color wheel) at a time.

We stamped the circles all over our large paper, focusing on mixing up the different sizes. 

Then we repeated this process with Discovery Stackers, Discovery Triangles, and Discovery Squares using a cool color palette of turquoise, blue, and violet paints.

Next, we wiped the shapes clean and offered all of them with yellow paint. I love to offer yellow as our last color because it's so vibrant and looks stunning when added on top of all the others.

Plus, if the paint underneath is a little wet still, adding yellow can mix new colors without getting too smudgey. 

Then, we let it all dry. 

Revisiting the next day (or whenever the paints are dry) we offered sharpies with rulers to add our lines. We used the rulers for long straight lines, but we also traced some of the shapes we had stamped and of course drew some of our own free-hand.

You can of course use regular black markers or felt pens with younger children that may not quite be ready for sharpies. 

It is not a perfect recreation of the Kandinsky pieces we observed together, and it shouldn’t be!

Process-focused art is about more than creating an end product. It’s about what we discover along the way.