Project Title: Traced shapes abstract painting
Medium: Painting and Drawing – Abstract Project
Grade Theme: Oceans and Fish

Overview: Students will create abstract paintings using traced shapes and colored with watercolor crayons that they will then blend with brushes and water.
Art Skills: Drawing, painting, composition
Process: Students will trace shapes and draw lines to section their paper into areas.  The shapes will be colored with watercolor crayons (no more than two colors per shape, no overlap, no two shapes with the same colors touching.) Students will then blend the colors using brushes and water.
Materials: Mixed media paper, watercolor crayons, brushes, Tools: rulers, triangles, tape rolls
Tools Provided by Classroom: pencils
Vocabulary: Vocabulary: Abstract Art, warm/cool colors, shape, blending, color mixing, color wheel
Abstract art: Art that uses a visual language of shape, form, color, and line to create a composition that does not (usually) depict a person, place, or thing in the natural world. In other words, nothing in abstract art has a name like a house, bunny, or tree – only color, shape, and line.
Complimentary Colors: Complementary colors are pairs of colors that lie opposite each other on the color wheel. When placed next to each other, they create the strongest contrast between those two colors. Complementary colors may also be called "opposite colors".
Additional Resource: Link to Art History and Connection
Multiple Subject Integration: Math, Geometry, color theory

*Please note that samples were made by teaching artists.  Students will be encouraged to make their own versions of this project. Please DO NOT show students these samples in advance of the art lesson.

Description Summary: Today students had a special art lesson making abstract paintings with shapes and colors.  They traced shapes and composed their designs, then colored and blended with watercolor crayons and brushes.