Abstract art is a great way to introduce kids to art and nothing better than Kandinsky’s Concentric Circles to explain and explore the Color theory. Kids can explore how different colors placed next to each other can create different moods and effects.

I would greatly suggest to create a Simple Color wheel with the kids for reference so that they can easily refer to it and see what happens and how it looks when complementary or analogous Colors are painted next to each other in the concentric circle.

This is a simple Color Wheel that I made with my 5 year old and we used it and experimented by making some circles having analogous Colors next to each other and others with Complementary Colors next to each other.

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Explain About Primary and Secondary Colors, Tertiary colors can be introduced too for the older kids. 

Primary Colors The colors RED,BLUE and YELLOW are called Primary colors because they cannot be achieved by mixing any other colors.

Secondary Colors The colors VIOLET(PURPLE), ORANGE and GREEN are secondary colors and they are achieved by mixing equal parts of two primary colors.

Tertiary colors The colors which are achieved by mixing a primary color with a secondary color.

Talk about Analogous And Complementary colors.Ask them to look at the Color wheel and make a list of Analogous colors and Complementary Colors.

Analogous-Colors next to each other on the color wheel for example: Red and Orange, Blue and Green

Complementary-Colors opposite to each other on the color wheel For Example: Yellow and Purple, Blue and Orange

Next Introduce them To the Famous Artist and his art on the Concentric circles inside individual Squares. 

 Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

Kandinsky was a Painter and art theorist born in 1933 in Moscow, Russia. He was credited for his abstract works.His Squares with Concentric Circles, 1913 is a very famous artwork and is used a lot to learn about color theory.

 Then we tried to create our own version of his artwork  using our colored pencils. As you see we did 12 concentric circles, which is also a great way to try out what we learnt in our color theory lesson.

Next we created a few more artwork inspired by the above artwork. We made a butterfly, a flower and butterfly and also a bird on a branch. You can also try out many other things like a tree with branches with the circles as leaves!!

Think about some more different ideas where you can apply this technique, try out all the different combination of colors you could use!!
Here’s an idea that you may use for inspiration!

 

 

Also you may follow the Link below to see an easy Abstract we did based on what we learnt: