Modigliani Style Portrait Paintings

This is one of my all time favorite lessons to teach to my junior high (Grade 7-9) students. 

I get so excited for the new results every time I teach it. 

You can see my previous posts on this lesson HERE and HERE.

It's inspired by one of my favourite artists, Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by elongation of faces, necks, and figures that were not received well during his lifetime but later found acceptance and now sell in the millions at auction. 

Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne, 1918
SOURCE 

 Students start off by looking at his work and then drawing a quick practice sketch. Then they draw their good copy on 12 x 18" heavy white paper. They need to elongate the neck and stylize the facial features. Many of them struggle with this because they say that the faces look 'so weird' and 'so creepy', haha.

Once the drawing is complete, they start by painting the skin colour. We use tempera paint for this project. I love the flat matte finish it gives. 

Then paint the hair and body/clothing and finally the background. I encourage students to mix colours and paint in a loose, free style.

Once everything is dry, go over all the pencil lines with a charcoal pencil (I like the General's brand) and blend with your finger to create a beautiful, soft shaded effect. 

Some Grade 7 - 9 artworks 

(and yes, I have mostly girls in my classes, hence all the female portraits!)

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 5 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.

They sketched these in pencil first, then outlined in Sharpie 

and painted using watercolours. 

Jim Dine Inspired Oil Pastel Heart

Jim Dine is an American artist.

I absolutely love his tool drawings as well as his expressive hearts. This is what we focused on to create these expressive hearts for Valentine's Day.

I have a variety of brands of oil pastels- I like to try out different brands. I usually stick with Pentel  brand but I like the Crayola classpack only because it comes with a ton of extra whites!! Why don't all oil pastels come like this?

Grade 5 students started off by choosing a piece of construction paper. They make a symmetrical heart template from a sheet of scrap paper then trace it onto the construction paper. Then they decide on their colour scheme. I demonstrate how to create a gradation from dark to light. Then they can do the reverse in the background.

Once everything is coloured in, I encourage them to add expressive lines with a black oil pastel. 

This step scares some students!

Interlocking Hearts Valentine Drawing

Here's a cool Valentine's project that teachers shading skills. I've taught this to Grade 6 students the past few years and they really enjoy it. 

I pre-cut manila tagboard into small squares. Students folded them in half and drew half a heart and they cut it out as well as the center. The hearts should be at least 1 cm thick so they're not too fragile. 

Then they trace it onto 9 x 12" drawing paper. They slightly overlap the hearts and then erase the correct lines so the two hearts are interlocked. This takes a bit of practice. 

Keep tracing and overlapping the hearts until the page is filled nicely. 

The next class I showed students how to shade the hearts so they look 3D. They could shade using either pencils or coloured pencils. 

Some Grade 6 results: