Overlapping Matisse Shapes

I combined an overlapping lesson with Matisse-like shapes to make a colorful drawing exercise. You could begin by talking about how Matisse didn’t start painting until he was about 20 years old, but then would paint morning, noon and night for pretty much the rest of his life. He eventually became a key figure in the world of modern art.

1. I had a lot of scrap chip board on hand and first gave the students several squares and rectangles they could spread out on their paper and trace for the background.

2. I passed out organic-looking shapes I had cut from posterboard to imitate the leafy and flowery shapes in many of Matisse’s most famous paintings. My students were just kinder and 1st grade, so they got a lot of tracing practice. Older students could draw these shapes freehand. To make the organic shapes look as if they were all in front, all lines inside of them were erased before coloring.

3. All shapes were traced in oil pastels and colored in as solidly as possible.

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Cezanne Meets Matisse Mural

Paul Cezanne was a French artist whom Matisse and others considered the father of post-Impressionism. This mural honors both artists by combining Cezanne’s subject matter with Matisse’s vivid color palette.

This mural has 24 pages to color and is 42" by 35" when complete. You can purchase my pdf file with instructions for just $5. Click the “Add to Cart” button below to make your payment and receive download instructions.

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Monet Pastel Iris Drawing

An on-going dilemma I face is how to help students draw new shapes, without giving them too much help. My current solution is to give them partial templates, so that they all have a good starting place to build upon. With these Monet-inspired Irises, the students were given just the center lower leaf as a template, and they had to follow my instructions to draw the rest of the flower.
1. The students used a 12" x 9" piece of paper, and a cardboard template for the lower Iris leaf, which looked a lot like an upside-down duck foot. I had them trace the petal in the center of their paper. Next, two more curved leaves were drawn to the right and left of that petal. Lastly, a center leaf is indicated with just one wavy line on top, and some small stamens were added in the center. After the flower was done, more were added to the right and left as space allowed.
2. When the drawings were complete, they were traced with a black Sharpie marker. I've learned that water-soluble markers will look OK initially, but bleed into the pastels over time. Not good if you want to keep all the nice detail your students have drawn.
3. After the drawings were complete, students were allowed to use blue or purple oil pastels to color their flowers, along with orange or yellow stamens. White pastel etched over the petals added a smudgy, Impressionist look to their art.

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Matisse Pattern Landscape

Henri Matisse, an important French artist, loved all kinds of patterns. Not only the decorative forms he created, but also reproductions of tapestries, embroideries, silks and more. A recent donation of leftover wallpaper inspired this project.
1. I first gave each student a 12" square of chip board for mounting. I passed a variety of wallpapers cut in 12" squares.
2. I asked the students to first choose one main wallpaper for their background and glue it to the chipboard with heavy use of a glue stick.
3. The next step was to choose a ground color and cut a horizon to glue over the background paper.
4. I showed the students how to draw a tree trunk on the back of the wallpaper to cut out and glue it over the ground and background. Tree tops were drawn on another piece of wallpaper to cut out and glue over the top of the trunks. Repeat this step in various sizes. Simplicity of all the shapes is encouraged.

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Ode to Matisse Mural

In the late 1800’s, Henri Matisse explored new ways of interpreting shapes and images in his vibrant paintings. His persistence opened a floodgate for modern artists to express their own vision, which believe it or not, was a radical idea at the time.

This collage of some of Matisse’s most famous paintings has 24 pages to color and is 30" by 62" when complete. You can purchase my pdf file with instructions for just $5. Click the “Add to Cart” button below to make your payment and receive download instructions.

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