Audrey Crosby

Intuition and art go hand in hand; at least thatʼs what I’ve observed over the years teaching art. Children are natural explorers who enjoy taking risks, and I love giving them a safe environment in which to experiment with a variety of media.

In this lesson, my students engaged in the process of mixing and blending colors to music, using soft pastels. I was interested in seeing how the music would influence the creative process in an instinctive way.

My learning targets were for students to understand abstraction, create an abstract work of art, and explore how art and music interact in the creative process. I taught this lesson to both second and third grade students with slight variations.

Once the lines were drawn, I instructed students to let the music inspire them as they mixed and blended colors to fill the negative space. It was exciting to see them entirely immersed in the process of mixing and blending colors—some used their fingers, while others used tissue.

At the end of the blending process, the second-grade students were given a black sheet of construction paper to draw music notes on. I provided laminated handouts with music notes as a reference. They then cut out the notes that were drawn on black paper and used liquid glue to place the notes where they wanted them on the pastel background.

Children are natural explorers who enjoy taking risks, and I love giving them a safe environment in which to experiment.

My third graders used the same handouts as a reference to draw their music notes with a black permanent marker on the music staff they had previously drawn on their work.

This lesson could be a great collaborative project with the school’s music teacher. I taught it leading into National Hispanic Heritage Month, and our music teacher was teaching students about Latin musicians. Her classes collaborated and created a banner for the month, and I displayed studentsʼ completed music-themed art around their banner, resulting in a pleasing hallway exhibition.

This lesson was successful with both grade levels. They enjoyed the calming effect of mixing and blending colors to music, and students felt capable of success from the beginning because they had intuitive freedom in creating their art piece.

At the end of the lesson, the class had time to share their thoughts about creating artwork in this manner, and the majority said that they enjoyed the process because they could be messy and the work would still look good!

Audrey Crosby has taught in the Georgia public school system as an art instructor for over twenty years. She currently teaches at Jenkins-White Elementary School in Augusta. Audrey was named Teacher of the Year for the 2025–2026 school year and was recognized as a top-six finalist for Teacher of the Year in the Richmond County School District. audreyartisan40@hotmail.com

Intuitive by Design: Responding to Music through Abstraction