Trends Modern Art

When I lived in East L.A., I would often hang out in South Pasadena. The beautiful Norton Simon Museum of Art is right off of Colorado Blvd. and it was a frequent destination of mine. They have an Amedeo Modigliani in their permanent collection. His elogated portraits of women with deep, soulful colors never ceased to fascinate me.

I knew that I would have to give the students clear instructions on how to lay out their portrait, to give them the look I was going for. So what I did was take a ruler and drew a few quick dotted lines to direct the little artists so they could have a few guidelines as to where they should draw their head and neck, to give it the full elongated effect. While in class, this proved to be a huge timesaver (we only have 45 minutes to complete the project) and left us with plenty of time to sketch and color.

• Pass out black 9 X 12 construction paper or black drawing paper.
• Instruct the students to draw their head in the top half of the page, which should be 3/4 down from the top. The chin should be right on the dotted line. This will insure that their portrait has that long quality.
• Once the children have sketched their head and neck, instruct them to complete all of their features. I gave them the choice of drawing themselves or another person they knew.
• Give students oil pastels (woooo--I'm really getting serious use of those oil pastels) and have them color their portraits til their heart's content.
• Encourage students to color the background as well, to give it another dimension.

The artwork above was created by a second grader.