Pablo Picasso is one of the forerunners of Cubism, an art movement that began in the early 1900’s. He began painting subjects from multiple viewpoints, giving his work a blocky, fractured look. Words I would use to describe his work are messy, explosive, and even disturbing. Your students will have a lot to talk about when they look at his portraits!

This artist and project may challenge a lot of your students because it is not traditionally “pretty”. So many great discussions can be had from the topic, and unfortunately there’s not enough time to talk through them all in class. Some options to encourage parents to discuss at home are “Does art have to be pretty to be successful?”, “What’s more important: the way art looks, or the message it conveys?”, and “In order to be a true portrait, does the artwork have to look like the person?”.

This project is about creating texture through paint.  The Impressionists used a technique called “impasto”, using thick paint on the canvas in such a way that the texture was very apparent and purposeful.  

When I first did this lesson several years ago, I followed the lesson idea from the book Discovering Great Artists closely.  You can still find that video in this post, but I’ve also included a new video that suggests a different method.  I find using this new lesson (using just joint compound to thicken paint) better teaches the Impressionist’s technique and is a more realistic experience for students to discover Morisot’s style.

Below you will find lesson plans as well as downloadable line drawings of some of her paintings.  The students will use the textured paint to fill in these images.  Because the paint is so thick, it is best to do this project in the beginning of the day so it has lots of time to dry.

I’m super excited that Van Gogh is part of our great artists line up this year. Talk about a famous artist. His work also provides a link in the chain of how we got from realistic artwork to abstraction in the early 1900s, which is a great topic of conversation.

This project walks students through replicating Van Gogh’s famous painting Starry Night. I love that we learned about astronomy this year, and can connect our knowledge about stars and phases of the moon to this painting. Students can even arrange the stars in the painting into their favorite constellation!