Modigliani Style Portraits

Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) was an Jewish/Italian figurative painter and sculptor who worked primarily in Paris, then the center of the avante garde at the beginning of the 20th century. Modigliani is almost the epitome of the 'tragic artist', in a way similar to Vincent Van Gogh. He lived a life of poverty which also involved alcoholism, drug abuse and tragic love affairs. His life of excess was ended by his death, at only 35, from tuberculosis. Modigliani died penniless and destitute—managing only one solo exhibition in his life and giving his work away in exchange for meals in restaurants or to ex-girlfriends. 

Today his paintings and sculptures sell for millions.

Here's a Modigliani I took a photo of at the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris.

Amedeo Modigliani

"Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne", 1918

Modigliani's portraits are characterized by elongated forms and simple, almost mask-like faces.

For this project, Grade 8 students created tempera paintings in the style of Modigliani. I started off by showing them a slide show of Modigliani's portraits and we discussed the main characteristics, colours and style of his works. They started by drawing a stylized portrait lightly in pencil. They had to include an elongated face, stretched neck, and large, almond shaped eyes. The rest was up to them.
Students seem to quite enjoy this type of portrait drawing as it's not super realistic
so it allows for a looser interpretation of the facial proportions.

Then they painted these using tempera paint. I chose tempera (as opposed to acrylic) because it dries to such a nice matte, flat finish. I felt this would lend well to the somewhat sombre feel typical of Modigliani's work. As well, Modigliani's portraits often include a sketchy, soft black outline and I knew charcoal would be perfect for this step. Charcoal works on top of tempera brilliantly. The tempera has the perfect rough texture to 'hold' the dry, dusty charcoal.

charcoal pencils for the last step

While painting, students were encouraged to loosely mix and blend colours on the painting itself. They also needed to include some type of simple background. Once dry, students used a charcoal pencil to add outlines and definition, then gently blended these lines with their finger.

Here are some of the results: