An Artful Thanksgiving

From Farmers' Market . . .

These photos are from a stop at Casa de Fruta in Hollister, California.

. . .  to Thanksgiving table . . .

These are painted pumpkins on my holiday table . . .

. . . to the Art Room . . .

. . . and these, of course, are from the Art Room.

Hope everyone enjoys a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with good food, friends and/or family, and a creative spirit!!

More Picasso Fractured Faces for Winter

After we did our Frankenstein lesson (see here) I started thinking of other options for this lesson. I did a quick Google search for Picasso Snowmen and found some full body examples, but no portraits. Thinking that kids would have fun with that variation I gave it a try. 

Instead of cutting out the face, I tried painting the 2 halves, shading for a bit of dimension. The background is pastel in the complementary color to the blue in the face. The pastels could be left like this, or smoothed over with a bit of paper towel for a blended look.

All the details were drawn on a separate piece of paper and colored with marker or crayon.

The last step is to cut them out, arrange them in a fractured (or Cubist) form and glue.

I like the idea of backing the whole piece in a color to complement the colors used in the collage/drawing.

The whole purpose of this exercise was to play around with breaking apart faces/profiles and gaining some understanding of what Picasso was experimenting with. I guess you can see that the possibilities are unlimited. I hope some of you give it a try with your students trying some other options!!

Celebrating Our Veterans

I love it when the Los Angeles Veterans' Cemetery is all red, white and blue with flags celebrating those who have served our country!

I always take time to thank my parents, who both served during WWII. My dad was in the Air Force and was a flight instructor. He has been gone for quite awhile now, but I know he would love the patriotic display.

 And my mom was in the US Navy as a link instructor (simulated flight experience for pilots). She always loves driving with me through the cemetery looking at the flags, too. I am pretty sure we will do that tomorrow.

I think it is about time to start a little needlepoint ornament for my Christmas tree -- a little flag to honor this day:)). Hope you are all enjoying yourselves!!

Picasso and Fractured Frankensteins

Last week one of our third grade teachers wanted to try out this lesson that she had seen on Pinterest using Picasso and Halloween as the motivation. So I helped out. (I wish I knew the original source to share with you, but all she had was a photo on her I-Phone and I don't have that information.)

We started with a little Picasso background and a Smartboard illustrated discussion about Cubism and its origins with Picasso and Braque. Students notice placement of eyes, nose, etc. and we talked about profile view vs. full face view.

Then, armed with the following guidelines, kids started cutting and glueing.
They had:

•  2 pieces of green construction paper (9" X 11"), one light and one darker     

•  1 strip of black construction paper (about 2" X 8")
•  1 piece each of black and white construction paper (about 4" X 6")  

•  1 large piece of construction paper forbackground (12" X 18") 

Students needed very little help as they created these fractured Frankenstein faces!!