Today's Explore Art Project is a Pablo Picasso inspired Portrait. Picasso is one of the most recognizable and famous names in art and there is a lot of information out there about him. I am going to give you a brief introduction and description about his artwork, in terms you can use with your young child.
The following are examples/ information and Picasso images I used for an Explore Art class, including a printable worksheet we used as a warm up, the project images are done by my little artist, Cyrus.
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, he is known for 3 periods in his art work. His blue period where he used blue tones, paintings had a melancholy or sad look often portraying the poor, his rose period used warmer tones and depicted circus images/people and last his cubist period that looked at images and created them in a new way.
Picasso was one of the founders of cubism, which was a different, new way to look at art and create art. Cubism breaks down the subject matter and puts it back together again. Kind of like humpty, dumpty. It puts it back together using simplified shapes and forms. Picasso used bright, bold colors.
Picasso’s portraits (pictures of people’s faces) uses cubism by utilizing shapes, colors and different viewpoints- combining them to make a face.
- Do you know the difference of a profile view and frontal view of the face?
- What do you think of Picasso using both?
- What do you think of Picasso’s portraits?
- What is your favorite element (line, color, shape ect) in his work?
Portrait Project:
This was our warm up worksheet. Let your child name the shapes and then see how they can use them to make a face on the head.
For the portrait project we did a crayon resistant watercolor painting. Similar to the Paul Klee project. You will need watercolor, or thicken paper, crayons, and watercolors/brush.
Using crayons start with a large circle of the head on the watercolor paper. You can help your child and draw the circle make it nice a big so they can more room to work with. Talk with them as they fill in the facial features and ask them what kind of shapes they can/ are using and why? Encourage them to use bright, fun colors like Picasso. Have fun.
Cy was working on a portrait of his little brother Sage, but somewhere along the way he got a mustache. Pretty impressive for a 1 year old.
Once they are done with the outline of the portrait they can paint a watercolor wash over their drawing. The crayon image will remain while filling in the rest of the paper with the watercolors.
Don't forget to have them work on the background. If you look at Picasso's work he used colors and textures in his backgrounds. Annie from our art class drew spirals or swirls with crayons and then went over them painting stripes with her watercolors. A very unique, Picassoquese background. Cy picked several colors purple, blue and green for the image shown.
The final product, Cy titled "Sage with a Mustache"
There you go Picasso portrait project, great for a rainy day afternoon project. This probably took Cy 10 minutes.
Easy set up, easy clean up, easy way to include art in their everyday.
It's been awhile since I've posted a famous artist inspired explore art project. Here's a project Cy worked on individually and I also held a class on. Jasper Johns Alphabet art with a look at pop art.
Let's start out with a little discussion and a few images to look at:
Pop Art takes famous or recognizable things out of where you would normally find them to make art. Look at this banana and all those soup cans someone made into a picture and hung up as art! Andy Warhol. Where would you usually find these things?
Jasper Johns is our artist today. He made paintings,
printmaking and collage. Johns was an American Pop artist he used everyday objects to make art. What do you see?
Subject, what are some things to use in your Pop Art picture? Famous or recognizable things like flags, signs, labels stenciled letters and numbers are also a favorite of Jasper Johns and
other Pop artist. Look at this picture can you tell me what it is?
Today's project:
The last image, Jasper Johns "Colored Alphabet" is the inspiration for today's art project.
Materials:
- Large paper (18 X 24)
- Paints (note Cy was using tube acrylic after begging for Mommy's paints, crayola washable paints would work just as well with this project)
- Magazine pages torn out
- Alphabet post its (found at the dollar tree-great score!)
- Not pictured scissors and glue stick
First step, get your alphabet lined up. You can sing if you like. Next cut squares out of your magazine pages, large enough to fit a letter on each square.
With the glue stick glue each letter to a magazine square and then start gluing them to the paper. Work in rows going across the page A-Z. A great element in this project are the magazine squares, although they are the backdrop for the letters they still add a bit to our pop art. Each square has a bit of text print or advertising on it and will slightly show in the final project.
Once everything is glued in place get painting. Using acrylic paints I had Cy add a bit of water to each color to create a nice wash that you'd still be able to see the post it note letter through. A little ways into the project we changed brushes to use a bigger, wider brush. Cy was then able to not concentrate so much on every mark he made and paint more freely and a bit faster.
Cy finished painting, giving each letter a different color wash. He also had some fun dragging the paint brush through the columns of neatly organized letters. And that's it our Jasper Johns inspired alphabet project. After it dried I did end up tracing each letter with a black sharpie to let the letters stand out a bit. This will be another great new addition to the boys' room art along with the melted crayon canvas.
This was a great project to introduce children to pop art and ways to find the everyday in art making. Working with the alphabet is something they will feel comfortable with and have a little fun. Talk with them as they work about finding and naming the letters, Cy enjoyed singing the alphabet song over and over again!
