January Art Project- Picasso Faces

These past couple of weeks have been very busy for our class. I introduced an artist study of Pablo Picasso and then led the students in creating their own Picasso inspired pieces of art.

First we read about Picasso's life and artwork. I emphasized how he used color to convey emotion and how different he was from other artists at the time.

We then looked a little closer at our inspiration picture. We discussed how Picasso used shape and color to convey emotion. We made a list of emotions and colors that can represent those emotions.

Students then chose two emotions and drew faces to represent the two emotions.

Students then colored the pictures using colors to convey the emotions they chose.  This students chose hungry and angry :) Hungry is not really an emotion, more of a feeling but it works!

Next, the students cut the faces into pieces using Picasso's cubist shapes as inspiration. We discussed sharp shapes and round shapes.

Finally, students arranged the pieces from both faces on a piece of paper and glued them down.

The final product is a cubist style face made with combination of two faces showing two emotions. The students wrote about their pieces on the index card below the face.

This project is a lot of fun for the kids. It took us a couple days to complete these. Next year, I'd like to spend a little more time. I think they would turn out even better if we painted the faces using more saturated colors. I think the students who used the most color had the most dramatic final results. These would be a great conclusion to a color investigation in art (primary, secondary colors) or as part of a weekly artist study.