Cartooning about Picasso

A few weeks back with on-line learning, my third grade students interacted with an assignment at the Tate Art Museum.  The assignment involved making a Picasso Fortune teller, they all love those and playing with it to chose a subject for their drawing.  I also task them with sharing one fact that they had learned about Picasso.  Fast forward to this week and their last assignments.  I we were in the building we would have been doing cartooning so I decided to try to stay on task with those plans and bring the Picasso fact they had shared back into the picture.  Students were given a number of cartoon templates that I found at Picklebums and were instructed to create their own original cartoon.  When this one hit my email today, I knew I had to share.

Picasso-stein

Okay, let me begin by sharing, this was not my project idea.  I needed one more quick project for October and a fellow art teacher friend shared this one with me.  First, I presented a brief history on the life of Picasso where we focused on the development of cubism.  The lesson was presented in a directed drawing format.  I always like to keep them guessing when I present a lesson this way.  Instead of revealing what we are drawing, I focus on shapes and lines and how they are combined to create form.  It doesn't take too many steps until students begin to guess what they are creating.  This one took awhile but they did quickly catch on to the fact we were creating like Picasso.  They are drawn on construction paper and colored with construction paper crayons and texture plates.  Texture had to be added in at least one area but could be utilized as much as the student wanted.

More Dr. Seuss

Here is a project idea that I borrowed from Art Projects for Kids.  She recently re-posted this Cat in the Hat image to share again this year.  Here is what I did with it.  My 1st graders completed the picture by giving the cat a Mondrian styled hat and 3rd graders used a Picasso theme for their hat.  Fourth graders were studying Keith Haring so completed the image in Haring style and 5th graders used their knowledge of Jim Dine to complete their pictures.   These were very successful and a lot of fun for the students as they were already studying the artist we used.  Here is also an image of a Dine by one of my 5th grade students this week.   I posted a multi grade bulletin board last year with works from all the artist styles.  Definitely one of my favorite bulletin boards. 

Picasso with a 21st century influence

 

Third grade students tried their hand at creating in the cubistic styling of Pablo Picasso.  First they attempted to imitate the multiple views of a portrait.  Next, they accentuated the shapes that would be found in a face.  Observing classmates and feeling their own faces assisted in this process.   Finally, they added color to their portraits while attempting to identify the shapes located in the portrait.