Little Artist: Picasso Witches

Little Artist: Picasso Witch

Here is a little lesson that I presented to my daughter’s first grade class in October as their Art Docent. Their school has an Art Docent program where parents volunteer to come in and educate the students about a particular artist. Then the students create a piece of art (usually one that can be hung on a bulletin board) relating to the artist they learned about.

ART: a Visual History by Robert Cumming

I often look to this book by Robert Cumming for inspiration. It is a wonderful book for some general information on many different artists. I recommend it for anyone who has even a slight interest in art history.

About the artist

Depending on how young the students are, I tend to pick and choose the information I share with them. Not overwhelming the younger students is key to having them retain information about the artist.

Background information on Picasso

Picasso was born in Spain in October of 1881. He began painting at the young age of 10 and first displayed his artwork at the age of 14. Picasso worked in many different mediums including painting, sculpting, printmaking, and ceramics. He created over 50,000 works of art during his lifetime.

Picasso and Cubism

Picasso is credited with being one of the co-founders of Cubism. In Cubsim, the subjects are broken up into shapes and rearranged into abstract forms. Cubism also shows the same subject from two different viewpoints on the same canvas. I tell the kids it is like looking at a Rubik’s Cube from the corner – you can see multiple sides at once. Cubism changed art by showing that an artist could use tricks to fool the eye.

Picasso's legacy

Picasso’s paintings are among the most expensive in the world. They often fetch millions of dollars at an auction house. Picasso is considered by many to be one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, if not all time.

The art project - Picasso inspired witch drawing

I love when things line up by chance. It was not until I presented the lesson to my daughter’s class that I realized Picasso was born days before Halloween. So it worked out perfectly to create Picasso inspired witches for our October Art Docent lesson. The goal was to create a drawing of a witch face in the style of Picasso. Thus, we will see both the frontal view and the side view of the witch in the one drawing. Then, ideally, the drawing will be colored in the bright colors of Picasso.

Step 1 - the hat

First, we start with drawing the witch’s hat. I found that if we do not start with the hat, then the kids draw the face too large and leave no room for the hat. Since it is a witch drawing, the hat is pretty key.

Step 2 - profile view

Then, we draw the side view of the witch. This tends to be the hardest part for the kids. I tell them to trace their finger down the profile of their own face to get a better feel for what they are drawing.

Step 3 - the face

Next, we draw in the other side of the face to match the profile side.

Step 4 - profile features

Now, we draw in the features on the profile side of the face. Remind the kids that this is a view of lips and eyes from the side. Sometimes it helps to have them look at each other’s profiles to get an idea of how much of the features are actually visible from the profile view. It is important that they make the profile features different from the frontal features.

Step 5 - frontal features

Next, we draw in the frontal view features. Again, remind the kids that this is a view of the lips and eyes from the front. So these features will not be the same as the profile features.

Step 6 - Sharpie outline

Sharpie time! The kids love using Sharpies, for some reason. At this point, we trace back over the pencil lines with black Sharpie to resemble the bold black outlines that Picasso used in his artwork.

Step 7 - the hair

Then we add in the hair. Instead of just doing straight lines or a big block of hair, we add lines to resemble the shapes used in Cubism.

Step 8 - add color

Step 9 - background

And that’s that! Hopefully your kids will enjoy the lesson and remember a few facts about Picasso.

Note: Some kids have a hard time with abstract art. Some prefer to draw things “perfectly” or exactly how they see them. Thus, creating abstract art is a struggle. I tell them to break the image down into shapes. Instead of looking at the piece as a face, look at it as different shapes. For example: I say “draw a horizontal oval” instead of “draw an eye.” It tends to free them a bit.

The Mom Touch