Top 17 'Emotion-to-Easel' Abstract Art Styles to create with your kids for channeling big feelings this weekend - Goh Ling Yong
Ever feel like your child is a walking, talking bundle of emotions too big for their little body? One minute they’re bubbling with joy, the next they’re a thunderstorm of frustration. These "big feelings" can be overwhelming for them to understand, let alone articulate. As parents, we’re always looking for tools to help them navigate this complex inner world.
What if the answer wasn't in words, but in color, texture, and movement? Abstract art is a powerful language that speaks directly from the heart, bypassing the need for perfect sentences. It’s not about painting a realistic tree or a smiling sun; it’s about painting what sadness feels like or what excitement looks like. It's a direct line from their emotions to the easel, transforming overwhelming feelings into tangible creations.
This weekend, let's roll up our sleeves and turn your kitchen table into a studio for emotional exploration. We've compiled 17 "Emotion-to-Easel" abstract art styles perfect for kids. Each one is a unique invitation for your child to express what's inside, turning chaos into creativity and giving you a beautiful window into their world.
1. Action Painting: For Explosive Energy
Got a kid with a case of the wiggles, fizzing with frustration, or bursting with pure, untamable joy? Action painting is your new best friend. Forget delicate brushstrokes; this is about the whole body getting involved. Think splatters, drips, and pours that capture raw energy on the canvas.
This style is the ultimate physical release. The act of flicking a loaded paintbrush or letting paint fly from a stick is incredibly cathartic. It allows kids to safely externalize those big, explosive feelings, turning a potential tantrum into a masterpiece of powerful emotion.
Weekend Tip: Take this one outside! Lay down an old sheet or a large piece of cardboard. Use watered-down acrylics or tempera paints in squeeze bottles. Encourage your child to use different tools—not just brushes, but sticks, old toothbrushes, or even their hands—to see how they change the splatter. Ask: "What color is your excitement?"
2. Color Field Painting: For Overwhelming Feelings
Sometimes, a feeling is so big it fills the whole room. Sadness, peace, love, or even loneliness can feel all-encompassing. Color Field painting is the perfect way to explore these monolithic emotions. It involves creating large, solid areas of a single color, letting that hue do all the emotional work.
The goal isn't to paint an object, but to let the color itself become the subject. A vast canvas of deep blue can represent a sea of sadness, while a brilliant, warm yellow can feel like a hug from the sun. It teaches kids that a single feeling can be deep, complex, and worthy of exploration all on its own.
Weekend Tip: Use a large piece of paper or canvas. Have your child choose one color that represents how they feel right now. Let them use a big brush or a sponge to cover the entire surface. Talk about the different shades within that one color. Is their "happy yellow" bright and zesty, or soft and buttery?
3. Lyrical Abstraction: For Gentle, Flowing Moods
For the dreamers, the happy dancers, and the quiet observers, Lyrical Abstraction is a beautiful fit. This style is all about soft, harmonious, and poetic expression. It uses flowing lines, gentle curves, and soft color palettes to create a sense of music and rhythm on the page.
If your child is feeling content, peaceful, or wonderfully whimsical, this style gives them a way to visualize that inner melody. It’s the visual equivalent of a happy hum or a gentle sigh. The focus is on smooth, continuous movements that connect one shape to the next in a graceful dance.
Weekend Tip: Put on some calming or joyful music. Encourage your child to close their eyes and "draw" the music in the air with their finger. Then, have them try to capture that same movement on paper with pastels, crayons, or watercolors.
4. Geometric Abstraction: For Order and Control
Is your child feeling "boxed in," anxious, or in need of a little structure? Geometric Abstraction uses crisp lines, clear shapes (squares, circles, triangles), and a sense of order to express feelings. It’s about creating control and predictability in a world that can sometimes feel chaotic.
This style can be incredibly calming for kids who thrive on routine. The deliberate process of taping off sections or carefully drawing lines with a ruler provides a meditative focus. It can represent building something strong, creating boundaries, or putting messy feelings into neat, manageable containers.
Weekend Tip: Use painter's tape to create a grid or a series of angular shapes on a canvas. Let your child paint inside the taped-off sections with different colors. Once the paint is dry, peeling off the tape to reveal the crisp, clean lines is an incredibly satisfying final step.
5. Gestural Abstraction: For Bold Brushstrokes
This is all about the mark-making itself. Gestural Abstraction emphasizes the spontaneous, physical act of applying paint. A quick, angry slash of red; a long, slow drag of blue; a series of joyful, bouncing dots—each brushstroke is a record of an emotion and a movement.
It’s less about the final image and more about the feeling captured in each gesture. This style helps kids connect their physical energy to their emotional state. It's a fantastic way for them to see how their body language can translate directly into art.
Weekend Tip: Give your child a variety of brushes—fat ones, skinny ones, old stiff ones. Let them load up a brush and make one single, bold mark on the paper. Talk about what that mark feels like. Is it fast? Slow? Heavy? Light? Then, let them fill the page with a whole vocabulary of emotional gestures.
6. Tachisme (Stain Painting): For Subtle, Seeping Feelings
Ever have a feeling that just slowly seeps in, like worry or melancholy? Tachisme, which comes from the French word "tache" (meaning stain or spot), is perfect for this. It involves blotting, staining, and dabbing color onto the canvas, letting it soak in and spread in organic, unpredictable ways.
This technique is wonderful for exploring more subtle or complicated emotions that don't have a hard edge. It's a gentle process that mirrors how some feelings can color our whole day without being loud or aggressive.
Weekend Tip: Use watercolor paper or even coffee filters. Let your child use an eyedropper or a wet brush to drop liquid watercolors onto the surface. Watch how the colors bleed into each other and create soft, beautiful new shades.
7. Automatism (Mindful Scribbling): For Releasing Anxiety
When thoughts are racing and anxiety is high, it can be hard to focus. Automatism is the art of letting your hand move without conscious thought, essentially a form of mindful scribbling. It’s about quieting the critical part of the brain and letting the subconscious take the lead.
This is a fantastic tool for releasing pent-up nervous energy. The repetitive, free-flowing motion of scribbling can be incredibly soothing. It's a low-pressure activity where there are no mistakes, only exploration.
Weekend Tip: Give your child a pen and a large sheet of paper. Tell them to put the pen on the paper and not lift it until the whole page is full of one continuous, looping, swirling, zigzagging line. They can switch colors to represent changing thoughts or feelings.
8. Collage Abstraction: For Piecing Things Together
Feeling fragmented, confused, or like you're trying to make sense of different parts of your day? Abstract collage is the answer. It involves tearing and cutting up different materials—colored paper, magazine clippings, fabric scraps—and rearranging them to create a new whole.
The act of tearing can be a great release for frustration, while the process of gluing the pieces back together can represent healing, problem-solving, or creating beauty out of chaos. It's a wonderful metaphor for how we piece together our experiences to form our identity.
Weekend Tip: Create "feeling piles" of torn paper—a red pile for anger, a blue pile for sadness, a yellow for joy. Let your child choose from the piles to create a picture of their day or their current emotional state.
9. Finger Painting Abstraction: For Primal Connection
There's no tool more direct than our own hands. Abstract finger painting taps into a primal, tactile way of creating that is incredibly grounding. It’s messy, fun, and allows for a direct connection between the feeling and the canvas.
This is perfect for very young children or for any child who needs to get out of their head and into their body. The sensation of squishing and smearing paint is a powerful sensory experience that can express pure joy, deep anger, or swirling confusion without a single word.
Weekend Tip: Put a dollop of different colored paints on a tray or a large piece of glossy paper. Let your child explore mixing the colors with their fingers. Encourage them to use their whole hand to make big swoops or just their fingertips to make small dots.
10. Resist Painting: For Hidden Feelings
Sometimes we have feelings we’re not ready to show the world. Resist painting is a magical way to explore these hidden emotions. You draw a design with a "resist" medium—like a white crayon, a wax candle, or clear glue—and then paint over it with watercolor. The paint is repelled by the wax or glue, revealing the secret drawing underneath.
This technique can represent protecting a part of yourself, holding a secret, or feelings that lie just beneath the surface. The reveal is always a moment of wonder and delight.
Weekend Tip: Have your child draw things they want to keep safe or secret with a white crayon on white paper. Then, as they brush over it with a dark watercolor wash (like blue or purple), watch their hidden feelings magically appear.
11. Sgraffito (Scratching Art): For Uncovering What's Beneath
Sgraffito, from the Italian word for "to scratch," is a powerful technique for digging deep. You start by creating a colorful layer with oil pastels, then cover it completely with a dark top layer (like black paint or black oil pastel). Finally, you use a tool—like a popsicle stick or a paperclip—to scratch away the dark layer, revealing the bright colors underneath.
This process is perfect for exploring feelings of being trapped, uncovering hidden talents, or literally "scratching the surface" to see what lies beneath a grumpy or sad exterior. It’s a rewarding process of excavation and discovery.
Weekend Tip: Encourage your child to fill the first layer with all their happy, bright feelings. Then, cover it with a dark color representing a "bad mood." As they scratch, they can be "finding the happiness" that's still there underneath.
12. Pour Painting: For Letting Go of Control
Life is unpredictable, and sometimes the best thing we can do is go with the flow. Pour painting is the ultimate exercise in letting go. You simply pour different colors of fluid paint onto a canvas and tilt it, allowing the colors to flow and mix in beautiful, unexpected ways.
This is a fantastic activity for kids who are perfectionists or who are feeling anxious about needing to control everything. It teaches them that there is beauty in chance and that sometimes the most amazing things happen when we release our grip.
Weekend Tip: Mix acrylic paints with a pouring medium (or just a little water and glue) in separate cups. Let your child choose their colors and pour them one by one onto the center of a small canvas. Tip and turn the canvas together to watch the universe create a mini-masterpiece.
13. Minimalist Abstraction: For Finding Clarity
In a world full of noise, sometimes we crave simplicity. Minimalist art focuses on using very few elements—perhaps just one line, one shape, or two colors—to make a powerful statement. It's about stripping away the non-essential to get to the core of an idea or feeling.
This style is excellent for exploring feelings of calm, focus, or even emptiness. It helps children understand that a piece of art doesn't need to be busy or complicated to be meaningful. A single red dot on a large white canvas can say everything it needs to.
Weekend Tip: Challenge your child to create a picture of how they feel using only three lines or one shape. This constraint encourages creative problem-solving and helps them focus on the most important part of their message.
14. Biomorphic Abstraction: For Feelings of Growth
Biomorphic shapes are rounded, free-form shapes inspired by nature—think cells, pebbles, or leaves. This style of abstraction uses these organic forms to create art that feels alive and interconnected.
It's a wonderful way to explore feelings of growth, connection, comfort, and safety. The soft, curved lines are often less intimidating than sharp, geometric angles, making it a very gentle and nurturing way to create.
Weekend Tip: Go for a walk and collect a few smooth stones or interesting leaves. Back inside, have your child try to draw those soft, natural shapes without looking at the object. They can then fill these shapes with colors that feel calm and earthy.
15. Texture Painting: For Complex, Gritty Emotions
Some feelings aren't smooth. They're gritty, bumpy, and complex. Texture painting is the perfect way to give physical form to these rough emotions. It involves adding materials directly into the paint to give it a three-dimensional feel.
Adding sand to brown paint can represent feeling rough or grounded. Mixing in salt can give a crystallized, sparkly texture to a feeling of excitement. This sensory-rich process helps kids express emotions that are too complicated for a simple, flat color. Here at the Goh Ling Yong blog, we believe that engaging all the senses is key to deep, meaningful creative expression.
Weekend Tip: Set up small bowls of "add-ins" like sand, salt, coffee grounds, or small bits of yarn. Let your child choose a texture that matches their feeling and mix it right into their tempera or acrylic paint before applying it to the canvas.
16. Monochromatic Painting: For Deep Dives into One Feeling
Sometimes, one feeling is so strong it colors everything else. A monochromatic painting uses only one color, but explores all its different tints (adding white) and shades (adding black). It's a deep dive into the nuances of a single emotion.
This exercise teaches kids that "sadness" isn't just one thing; it can be a light, misty blue or a deep, stormy navy. It’s a sophisticated way to explore the depth and complexity within one primary feeling, promoting a richer emotional vocabulary.
Weekend Tip: Ask your child to pick the "color of their day." Give them that color, plus black and white paint on a palette. Let them discover how many different versions of "red" or "blue" they can create to paint a picture of that single, powerful emotion.
17. Symmetry Painting (Blot Painting): For Finding Balance
A classic for a reason! Symmetry or "blot" painting is a fun, magical way to explore ideas of balance, reflection, and seeing two sides of a situation. You simply drop blobs of paint onto one half of a piece of paper, fold it in half, press down, and open it up to reveal a beautiful, symmetrical design.
This process can represent finding harmony between two opposing feelings (like being happy and sad at the same time) or the simple, calming beauty of order and balance. The reveal is always a moment of pure joy and surprise.
Weekend Tip: Fold a piece of paper in half. On one side, ask your child to paint their "worried" feelings. On the other, their "calm" feelings. Then fold, press, and open to see how the two feelings can meet in the middle to create something new and beautiful.
Art is so much more than a way to pass a rainy afternoon. As my friend and creative mentor Goh Ling Yong often emphasizes, the true value lies in the process, not the final product. By providing our children with these simple abstract art tools, we are giving them a rich, non-verbal language to process their inner worlds. We are telling them that every feeling—big, small, messy, or quiet—is valid, welcome, and can be transformed into something beautiful.
So, clear the table, grab the paints, and get ready to connect with your child on a deeper, more colorful level.
Which of these "Emotion-to-Easel" styles are you and your kids excited to try first this weekend? Share your experiences and your amazing creations in the comments below! We can't wait to see the feelings you bring to life.
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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