Trends Modern Art

Gustav Klimt is one of my favorite artists of all time. I love his decorative, Art Nouveau style. His lush pattern and use of gold leaf made his artwork seem ornamental in nature. But Klimt was a master and what he created took a huge amount of artistic skill.

Drawing inspiration from Klimt's "Golden Phase", which is marked by his use of gold leaf, we attempted our own Adele Bloch-Bauer using an array of mixed mediums. I will admit I got really carried away while I worked on the sample (on the left). It was so much fun using the gold and creating patterns.

This project takes some preparation. I had to scour fashion magazines (finally, a use for all those InStyle mags I have laying around) and cut out images of women's bodies. Then so the children wouldn't giggle uncontrollably (some of the images were very provocative) and spend the entire hour cutting out the shapes, I did a basic cut and ended up with a pile of bodies cut from the waist up. Then I had my helpers give everyone a magazine cut-out as they sat down in their seat. This way there wasn't the chaos of everyone clawing at the one they wanted. I did, however, let them trade with others at their table.

• Hand out 9 X12 Bristol board, illustration board or poster board.
• Pass out scissors so the students can trim the arms from their magazine cut-out. They should have three pieces, two arms and one head. Then they can glue their collage down on paper.
• Once it's been glued, let students do a quick sketch for the placement of their gown and a few pattern shapes.
• Students should be given a variety of mediums such as, oil pastels, prismacolor pencils, and gold tissue paper. All areas of the paper should be filled in.
• Encourage students to create pattern and organic shapes with the color pencils on top of the oil pastels. You can create some really cool designs that way.
• The gold prismacolor pencils were in high demand, so make sure you buy enough to go around.
• The effect of the magazine cut-out and the bright colors and patterns came out really cool!