Abstract Numbers

Charles DeMuth was an American artist who lived in the early 1900's, and became famous for his abstract paintings that used lines to fragment and divide his canvas. 1. DeMuth's "Figure 5 in Gold" is a wonderful abstract painting to show children as they can easily see the firetruck elements in it. Start by having students draw their own large block number on a piece of paper. I like to give the kids a choice of doing the 5 or another single digit number.
2. Using a ruler, they can draw about 5-6 lines from edge to edge to dissect the paper into many sections. Encourage them to spread the lines out, and then trace all with a black marker.
3. I used Art Stix to color this piece as they are bright and not too messy, but you could use crayon or oil pastels too. Have the students choose one color for the inside of their number. In my example, I colored the inside of my 5 with orange first. When that is done, they can color in each segment with different colors, overlapping to create a new color when necessary.