Monday, October 26, 2015

4th - Picasso Roosters

4th Grade: Picasso Roosters

4th Graders explored some of Pablo Picasso's works-all of which had a common theme-the rooster. One of Picasso's famous paintings, The Rooster, is an amazing blend of technique and creativity. It also has a lot of deeper, hidden meanings. Many people have theorized that it represented the mood of the era that it was painted in. Many people believed it meant anger or sadness or worry. (Picasso painted in during WWII). Others believed it meant hope. For sure The Rooster has many bright colors and showed that Picasso was a master in his field. It is abstract and bold. Picasso's original painting had a rather plain and neutral background. However, for our purposes, we decided to lighten things up a bit. Students created "farm" backgrounds to give a sense of place to their roosters. We did keep with the boldness and creativity of the original rooster. 

On the first day of creating this project, students drew in the rooster with a Crayola Construction paper crayon (I'm beginning to realize the fantastic advantages of using these like a pencil on dark papers) on black 12" x 18" paper. (Riverside brand paper) I did a step by step of drawing a basic rooster. Students could draw the rooster in a vertical or horizontal format on the paper. Next, was to add color with oil pastels. We've started using Crayola brand oil pastels recently. I now prefer these over other brands. They do not tend to roll off the table as much and they have a nice point. Students were encouraged to use their imagination and block in their color in a creative/unusual way. We talked about shapes, patterns, lines. It was very cool to see how many DIFFERENT ways students came up with to add their color in! Amazing and impressive!!
Next, we did a step by step for the farm scene background. I gave instructions for drawing a barn, hills, and fence. Students could choose the placement of all of these and what colors they would be. Again, students drew these in with the construction paper crayons and then added color with oil pastels. I did strongly advice students to outline parts of the rooster, barn and fence with a dark, bold black oil pastel. (or some students preferred white). Without this step, a lot of the lines would be lost in all the color. Most students did this. 
Last step, students added sky with chalk pastels. I did laminate these as the chalk pastels smear so bad without the lamination.

These are so AWESOME! 

A very patriotic rooster!
Amazing blending in the sky!
Color and technique that would make even Picasso proud!
Nice bold line and color!
This rooster reminds me of a patchwork quilt!

No comments:

Post a Comment