Mondrian Style Animals

If you're looking for a fast project, here's a keeper- only markers and they always come out really fun!

Students looked at the work by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. They described the types of lines, colours and shapes used in his works. They chose an animal, drew a simple outline of it. Using a ruler, they broke it up into vertical and horizonal lines. They traced everything in Sharpie and then coloured using the three primary colours, plus black. 

Some finished Grade 4,5 results:

 

Freestyle Mondrian Drawings

This was a project my Grade 4 - 6 students completed during the last week of school in June. I wanted something simple but fun as we were ALL tired from this past year especially. Normally I do a Mondrian Animals project but this time I simply introduced his work and allowed the kids to make their own Mondrian inspired drawings- whatever subject matter they wanted They drew these in pencil then coloured them using markers. This took about 80 minutes to complete.

 

Mondrian Animals

Here's a fun way to teach students about Piet Mondrian- in the form of animal! I teach this to Grade 3 or 4 as I find this age group really enjoys doing animal-themed projects. 

I posted the steps previously HERE.

You simply need white copy paper, pencils, rulers and markers. 

 

Mondrian Hearts

I decided to start my February Valentine-themed lessons early this year! So here are the first crop of 'love' themed artworks to share.  My Grade 3's made these Mondrian style hearts. The project was inspired by THIS post on the Mrs. T's First Grade Class blog.

Instead of a template, my Grade 3's made their own heart on black paper by folding the paper in half then drawing half a heart shape. They used this heart template to create a slightly smaller one on white paper. Using a ruler and pencil, they drew horizontal and vertical lines, aiming to create a variety of different sized rectangles and squares. (We had looked at a slideshow of Mondrian's work to get an idea of his style and discuss the concept of non-objective art).

Once the lines were mapped out, students chose which ones to colour in the primary colours as well as black. We used wax crayons for this step; tempera paint or oil pastels would also work very well.

Once coloured, I had pre-cut a whole bunch of 1/2" strips of black construction paper using my paper cutter- fast and efficient :)  Students glued these down covering their pencil lines and trimming the edges afterward. Then they glued them onto their black heart which created a nice frame/border.

This project took about 2 - 4 minute periods for all students to complete.

Some of the Grade 3 results:

Any students who finished really early could do a second one but using colours of their choice- I love this one!

Mondrian-Inspired Animals

I finally got around to trying out the popular "Mondrian Animals" lesson. I originally saw it in "Arts & Activities" magazine by art teacher Berniece Patterson - find the lesson plan HERE.

It's a great project for those on a budget because it uses very simple supplies: white paper, regular water-based markers and a ruler. I started off by showing kids a slideshow of Mondrian's famous squares and rectangles art. We talked about the colours used, why he might have limited his colour palette and if they thought his artwork would be easy to create or not (seeing as it's so simple.) His style of art is considered 'non-representational'.

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) Composition C (no.III), with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935

Kids started off by drawing a simplified outline of an animal of their choice. They were instructed not to include any details within the body other than a simple eye. The, using a ruler, they drew horizontal and vertical parallel lines within the animal body. Keeping the lines parallel proved to be quite a challenge for them!! I find that students rarely use rulers (for drawing straight lines at least) these days in class, and it shows during art class!! 

Once all the lines were drawn, students coloured in some of the shapes using Mondrian-esque 

colours of red, yellow and blue with touches of black. 

The last step was to use the ruler again to trace over all the lines with a thick black marker.