Picasso Portraits

First Grade artists have been exploring the abstract work of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. They learned that Picasso worked in a style called Cubism. After looking at lots of cubist art pieces, our smart first graders decided that cubism is when an artist uses lots of shapes and shows details from different views in the same picture – like their practice drawings here:

Next they discovered that when Picasso was sad, he used lots of blue paint during his “Blue Period”. Picasso’s work changed when he became happier and he used more oranges and pinks during his “Rose Period”.

They chose their own blue or rose color period to create their Picasso portrait collages. See more of our awesome Picassos at our Artsonia on-line gallery!

Learning Goals:

I can tell two facts about Pablo Picasso; I can explain cubism; I can create a portrait in the cubist style of Pablo Picasso

January 22, 2011 by josettebrouwer

First Grade Picassos

First graders have been learning about Pablo Picasso and cubism this week. They’ve had great fun talking about Picasso’s portraits that show many views of the face at the same time.

We created our own Picasso portraits, and included a review of warm, cool, and neutral colors as we painted our portraits.

The final step was to go over all of our lines with black oil pastel so our shapes would pop out. This turned out to be the most difficult step – those lines kept hiding, and Mrs. Brouwer kept sending everyone back to find one more line!