Third and Fourth grade collaborative circle paintings

A colorful abstract painting with various swirls, shapes, and patterns in vibrant hues of pink, yellow, green, and red.
Here's an abstract, colorful painting with various shapes, patterns, and vibrant hues like blue, red, green, and yellow.

I was so excited to see this idea of Circle Painting!!   I first learned about it at Barbara’s Thought of the Day and then at We Heart Art.  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. for this wonderful idea.  We are making several collaborative canvases with this technique and they are going to be raffled off at our end of the year school FUNdraiser.  The kids had a blast creating these paintings.  This is the first video I have edited using Imovie!  I’m planning on making two more canvases with an older class to keep at school for display.


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19 Comments

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  1. Marcia,

    The paintings are beautiful and I am so envious that you know how to make movies with an IPhone! Owl City is one of my favorite artists and I love that song. Thanks for sharing!

    :)Pat

  2. Thanks! Pat, the movie was made by taking video clips with a regular digital camera and then editing it on the computer on the Imovie program. I don't have one of those fancy phones, lol 🙂

  3. These are beautiful! The children did such a nice job. Did you wait until the end to give them black paint to make some accents? I would love to try this sometime.

  4. Oh wow… these are beautiful! What a great idea for a school fundraiser! Your video is fantastic! I love the music you put with it too. Great job! So happy you joined us 'in the studio' to share! Thank you! 🙂

  5. These are beyond beautiful!!! Love your video! Your students did a great job! Would love to try something like this with my students! Thanks for sharing! 🙂

  6. LOVE this idea! How did you prevent the muddying of colors? Did each student work with only one color? Or did you just make sure that one brush stayed with one color? Was this all done in one class period?

  7. This is beyond wonderful, and I want to try it.I have a few questions:
    1) How large were the canvases?
    2) How many children on each canvas, or did you have them walk around the room with their paint brushes to add the color they had on all the canvases?
    3) Would this work on a large piece of tag board (we have it at school)
    4) How did you set up the project? Did you show them any symmetry, or mandalas?
    5) Do you think this would work with second graders?
    Thank you so much, Marcia

    • 1. The canvases were large.. maybe 2 feet wide?
      2. There were about 6 or 7 kids working on each canvas. Ideally maybe 5 per canvas.
      3. I have definitely done this on tagboard or posterboard.
      4. I did not show them any symmetry or mandalas. I think I just demonstrated for them how to start with a circle and then add designs around it. I may have also shown them a video about “circle paintings” on Youtube. I can’t remember!