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Art Tales Activity: Alma Thomas
Create a Color Square!

This nearly square, abstract painting is filled with circles within circles, like nested rings, each of a single bright color against the ivory white of the canvas. Each ring is made up of a series of short, rectangular dashes, and some bands are narrower while others are a bit wider. The majority of the rings are crimson and brick red, and they are interspersed with bands of lapis blue, army green, and pale pink. One of two pumpkin-orange bands is the smallest, innermost ring at the center. There is one aqua-blue colored ring just inside a pale, shell-white ring, which is the first to get cropped by the edges of the canvas. A few red, green, and blue rings beyond the white band are only seen at the corners of the canvas.

Alma Thomas, Pansies in Washington, 1969, acrylic on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Vincent Melzac), 2015.19.144

Alma Thomas loved to explore color—which she did as an artist and art teacher in Washington, DC, public schools for over 35 years. Many of her paintings include only one color or a few colors. Her paintings show her love of nature and music.

Alma Thomas painted at her kitchen table, which had a view out to her garden to inspire her color choices and brushstroke shapes. She painted from her imagination, too. In some of her paintings she imagined what Earth might look like from space—inspired by the Apollo moon landings she viewed from her television screen.

Create a Color Square

Try your hand at making some art of your own! This video will show you how to make small blocks of color, like artist Alma Thomas, that together build a larger work of art. Think like an artist by experimenting as you create new marks and patterns.

thumb-color-square-final

Gather your art supplies. 

You will need:

  • Paint sticks or other coloring materials such as colored pencils, crayons, markers
  • Heavyweight paper or scrap paper cut into 3 × 3–inch squares

Choose one color. Use it to make different shapes and lines within your paper square. Use just one color, like Alma Thomas did, to make small blocks of color that build a larger painting. Try experimenting—turn the square or hold your coloring material differently—to create new marks and patterns! With a friend or a group, try combining your color squares in different ways to make one larger, multicolored square.