Picasso Tinted and Shaded Self-Portrait

Pablo Picasso's Blue Period, in which he painted only blue paintings of sad subject matter, is a good example of how an artist used color to reflect his feelings. Ask children to think of the different feelings associated with colors before they choose the main color for their self-portrait.

1. Show the students how to draw a simple self-portrait with pencil on a heavy piece of paper. It's a good time to review the basic proportions of the face (eyes in middle of oval, nose halfway down, etc.) Have them trace the pencil lines with a black Sharpie marker.
2. Let the students choose one main color - red, blue, green or yellow are good – and distribute on a paper plate with a little black and white. (Acrylic and tempera paints will work for this.) Show the students how they can mix many variations of the main color by adding a little of each color together on the plates.
3. Ask the students to fill in each area of their drawing with a different color of paint. If the paint is thinned well with water, they can paint over some of the black lines if they want.
4. After the entire face and background is painted, let dry. When complete, any black lines that were painted over may be traced again to make them stand out.
This very cool painting was made today by a kindergartener in my afterschool class.

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Sea Turtle Painting

If you look closely at this picture you'll see a lovely texture that was created by...plastic wrap.

1. You need to use true watercolor paper for this. I once ran out and used plain drawing paper – it didn’t work at all. So, give each student a 9" x 12" sheet of watercolor paper and demonstrate how they can draw a sea turtle with ovals, legs and head. They may start their drawing with a pencil, but they then need to trace all the lines with a dark crayon to hide the pencil.
2. I like to use dissolved watercolor tablets. Give the students blue and green watercolor in separate cups, and have them make overlapping splotches of each color all over their drawing. They must use a generous amount of paint. When the paper is really wet, cover the entire paper with a generous section of plastic wrap. Show the students how to push the wrap around until a lot of wrinkles are created. Let the painting dry about an hour or so before you remove the wrap.

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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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