Dali Inspired Surrealist Animals

Here's a popular Dali inspired lesson based on his painting "The Elephants" from 1948. Students chose any animal they wanted and stretcheeeeed the legs nice and long. I always love how funny these turn out! See the steps previously posted HERE.

Work from Grade 4-6 students:

 

Surrealism Style Magazine Collage

Grade 10- 12 students looked at the work of Surrealist master Salvador Dali. They noticed the high realism of his work, the sense of space and distance and the juxtaposition of random objects in one picture plane. 

Salvador Dali, "The Persistence of Memory", 1931

Students started off by looking through my stash of magazines (why does every art teacher have a huge cache of National Geographics, lol). They were to rip out any page that had an interesting image or cool texture or something that would make a good background. 

Once they had collected a fair number of images, they had to carefully and precisely cut out each image and then re-arrange them on their background landscape, creating a pleasing composition. I encouraged them to try and tell a weird story, but not to clutter the composition with too many images.

Some finished collages:

(there were some really weird ones and some humorous parts!!)

 

Dali Inspired Surrealist Animals

This project was inspired by the 1948 painting The Elephants by the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. I introduced my Grade 4 students to the work of Dali and we discussed his style- barren landscapes with a real sense of depth and space, highly realistic details, lots of random objects grouped together.

See my previous posts on this project HERE and HERE.

Grade 6 students started by sketching out an animal of their choice, making sure to stretch and dramatically lengthen their legs. A great time to discuss the principle of proportion in art.

Once drawn, trace over all the lines in Sharpie.

And paint in watercolours. 

Students should include some sort of creative background. 

Some finished Grade 6 works!

 

Dali's Moustache Portrait Drawing

This is a portrait drawing lesson I teach as part of my Salvador Dali unit to Grade 6 students. 

See my other Dali lesson HERE. This lesson was inspired by the one posted HERE on the Australian art blog "Use your Colored Pencils".

So we start of by looking at photos of all of Dali's crazy moustaches. Then I do a portrait drawing review and give them handouts with photos of Dali on it. 

They skecth out their Dali portrait in pencil then go over all the lines with a black marker.

For the background, students could do whatever crazy ideas they wanted. Some added ants, melting clocks or other typical Dali imagery. Hot glue on a pipe cleaner moustache as the last step. 

I love how fun and silly these are!