Squares, circles, and colors that sing.

Whether he meant to or not, Wassily Kandinsky turned a simple color study into a famous work of art. But as someone who heard colors and saw music, Kandinsky created a kind of visual symphony with everything he painted.

While most of us don’t experience synesthesia, this week’s color exploration can reveal more than just how colors interact.

Let’s play with seemingly simple concentric circles on a grid to explore how colors interact with each other and with a fun resist technique. And consider the center and structure that define our lives.

Color studies help artists understand how colors interact with each other and how they can be used to create specific moods or effects, as well as how they appear in different light.

Materials

In this week’s video of my first go at this activity as a sample piece for a class at the library where I work, I’m using oil pastels, which I almost never use and don’t own. This is a work set.

If you don’t have oil pastels, no problem. Crayons are also perfect for this. If you’re interested, here’s an inexpensive set of oil pastels available on Amazon.

I’m using an inexpensive set of pan watercolors that I can’t tell you the brand of because there’s no marking on the container. The outer packaging has long since been discarded, and I don’t remember where I got them. At the library we used tube watercolors. Use what you have.

In my BETTER WITH ART videos, I typically use a super inexpensive Prang basic eight watercolor set.

If you use any of my Amazon links and make a qualifying purchase, I will make a small commission as an Amazon Associate. This does not affect your price, but allows you to support BETTER WITH ART with your new art supplies. So, thanks so much if you do! If you’d like to see more of more art materials I use that are available on Amazon, you can check out my Amazon Storefront.

Easy grid trick

I’m using cardstock and taping it down with masking tape. This will make a nice clean edge and keep the paper from warping and buckling with the watercolor.

Two sheets of card stack are ideal because of this super simple way to create your grid of squares. I’m using my little paper cutter, but a pencil, ruler, and scissors are just fine. Cut either a two-inch strip for a 5×4 grid as I’m using in this video, or a two-and-a-half-inch strip for a 4×3 grid, which is more like Kandinsky’s, and as I used with a group at the library.

For your odd number columns or rows, start straddling the approximate center. For your even number column or row, start along the approximate center. Don’t worry about it being perfect, but starting at the centers is best to create your borders of safe space for your tape.

If you have access to a printer there’s also a printable grid, with other encouragement and another fun Kandinsky inspired creative self-care art activity whether or not you’d like a grid, in the free printable Kandinsky PDF I made for you.

For this demonstration and fun, I did not choose a color palette. I did with my larger squares at the library, and I’ll talk more about color choice later.

I quickly found I preferred layering my circles, so to speak, instead of drawing them singly. My circles were imperfect and not perfectly concentric, but oh, so enjoyable to create.

Getting started with circles & meaning

Concentric, it means sharing the same center. Like a ripple in a pond or the rings inside a tree trunk.

And Kandinsky’s circles.

I often talk about how the relaxing, repetitive nature of simple, intuitive mark- or art-making, and, yes, doodling can relax and calm us and help us enter that creative flow state where all the noise outside and within quiets. (I made a video about doodling’s amazing benefits: More than Scribbles: How Doodling Helps Your Brain).

 I’ve also mentioned how therapeutic I find circle-making, and rounded shapes, and softening the sharp corners in my simple neurographic creative self-care art-making.

With today’s circles, we’re going a bit deeper, considering how these circles differ from, say, my rounded watercolor blobs in purposely focusing on the creation of concentric circles, circles centered on the same spot, even if they’re doing so a bit haphazardly, within a square or box.

Circles appear often in Kandinsky’s work. For him, they represented the meeting of inner and outer worlds, the spiritual and the material coming together. He was one of the first artists to paint completely abstract works. He wasn’t trying to capture people or places. He wanted to paint how color felt, how it moved, how it resonated with the soul.

As you get into the rhythm, drawing your own concentric circles, circles surrounding a center, think about what’s at the center of your life lately. What do your days revolve around? Where do you spend your energy? What has your attention and keeps you spinning around it, directing your choices, motivating your actions?

Is it something that supports who you want to be, or is it something you didn’t mean to put at the center at all?

Maybe you’ve gotten so busy or distracted you haven’t noticed that you’ve been circling something that isn’t in line with what you want at the heart of your life.

As we create circles on paper this week, let’s think about what our lives are really circling around, and whether it’s time to shift our center.

Adding watercolor

After I had my rather random-colored concentric-ish circles in whatever colors I’d felt like in the moment, it was time for intuitive, which sounds more therapeutic than random, watercolors. Maybe it wasn’t so much a color study as a color experiment explosion. And that’s okay.

When I did this project with one of the groups at the library, I was more intentional. Which is also okay.I used a color from the red family, one from the yellow family, and a blue, of both pastels and paints. Layering the pastels and blending the watercolors created lovely and interesting oranges, greens, and purples.

And we’re not just exploring how the colors interact. We’re also enjoying the effects of a resist technique. The oil pastels or crayons resist the watercolor as the paper accepts it. And that’s a beautiful part of what this activity represents this week, too.

The beauty of unique

At the library, one boy chose a gold pastel. He brushed a Prussian blue over it, and the effect was gorgeous. It made me think of some of what I love about Gustav Klimt’s art. I don’t have that combo in the video, but recalling the moment reminds me that the same exercise can yield endlessly unique results.

I hadn’t expected shimmer that day in that project. It looked so lovely and independent.

Despite all the stuff that makes up a life, that colors your world in light and dark, bright and dull, what shines through?

What matters most?

Maybe what you’re holding at the center doesn’t belong there and keeps you in unnecessary shadow, obscuring your true beauty, or shading you from the light you need.

Maybe you need to shift toward or back to what’s truly meaningful.

What voices, habits, or fears fight to take the center? How can you best resist those influences and protect your center?

It may seem small, but even taking the time for this simple art activity, and expressing your creativity in other ways, can be a meaningful way to practice healthful self-care, creative self-care, and help you get centered, stay centered, in the chaos.

We can’t always control how things come together in our lives. And that’s okay. There’s always beauty to find.

Maybe you feel trapped in a box with your chaos, forced to circle something that keeps you from something bigger or better or brighter. Life-giving.

Responsibilities, routines, and demands. Jobs, kids, caregiving. Can feel like the grid. And not in a good way. They give structure, but sometimes feel restrictive or overwhelming. It’s easy to resent them.

Yet, even within those frameworks, you have choices. You can bring color, creativity, intention, and purpose to what you do.

Even small actions, like noticing beauty, showing care, or taking a mindful moment, can center you and move you toward what matters most.

When was the last time you prayed?

A reminder of the power you hold

Your own squares with concentric circles are a visual reminder. What’s at your center influences everything around it. What might you shift even slightly to align your movement with the heart of who you want to be? Who you were created to be?

Sometimes we need a shift in attitude.

When your color study is complete, the conversation doesn’t have to end. Kandinsky said, “Color is a power which directly influences the soul.”

Take a moment to notice what colors you’re drawn to. And what your circles might reveal about your life’s center.

Remember that even small mindful actions ripple outward. Even a few minutes of low pressure art-making, like circles on a grid, can help you find some peace in the chaos. And necessary refreshment.

Creative self-care is rejuvenating and can help you refocus.

Free resource

If you’d like some more circle-centered encouragement, a journaling prompt to take today’s exploration further, and/or another Kandinsky-inspired creative self-care art activity, or the printable grid mentioned earlier, check out this week’s Wassily Kandinsky PDF available for free here on my website.

Connect

If you try this project, I’d love to see your circles. Tag better.with.art on Instagram, or sign up to join The Better With Art Online Community private Facebook group, and receive occasional creative self-care inspiration emails from me. If my video has you feeling inspired to take some time for creative self-care, be sure to hit the like button and subscribe for more when you hop over to YouTube. If you’d like, drop a comment, too, to let me know you were there. It means a lot, and I read every one. Let me know how you feel about Kandinsky’s circles or what they revealed about your center, your constraints, your power to shift and find meaning in all of it.

As always, I wrap up with the encouragement to make art.

It’s not a waste of time.

Because we are BETTER WITH ART.

If your budget allows, check out my ArtWear that encourages others to make art for mental health. It’s available in my Fourthwall shop along with accessories I create by with my art papers under glass cabochons that make them luminous as they magnify the patterns!