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.
My posting will be a little bit slow during the holiday season, since we are on vacation and we haven't done any new projects. But after the first of the year, this place should be bumpin' again. Until then, I leave you with this, an oil pastel Modigliani self-portrait that one of my junior high students created. I love when I have a student in class that shows so much promise. He really gets it.