Hello hello! My name is Missy. I am an artist and blogger here at PBS KIDS Utah. I am very excited about this week because we are going to learn about one of my VERY favorite artists. And we are going to do one of my very favorite art techniques. And our project is kinda crazy, which I love.
Artist Highlight:
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish artist (from Spain). He lived from 1881 until 1973. He, like Chuck Close, painted (and sculpted) mainly portraits of people. But unlike Chuck Close, Picasso’s style was not photo-realistic. Not at all! Picasso was part of an art movement called Cubism. Cubism isn’t just putting together blocky portraits like most people think. Cubists were trying to capture multiple angles of a person (or an object/scene) all in one piece. So often you’ll see a person’s eye from the side on one half of a face, and then a frontal view of their eye on the other side. This makes for some wild and amazing looking portraits.
We are going to make some of our own cubist portraits. But instead of using paint or clay like Picasso, we are going to use a technique called collage. A collage is a collection of items (these can be papers, photographs, fabric, etc.) arranged and glued down on a surface. We are going to use magazine images as our items.
Supplies:
- Copy/printer paper
- Magazines (with photos of people)
- Glue stick
- Scissors
Instructions:
- Flip through magazines and rip out at least 10 pages with large faces. The bigger the better.
- Cut a few of the faces in half. And cut a few of those halfs in half again.
- Cut out some eyes alone, noses alone, mouths alone, ears alone and hair alone.
- Cut out some hats, ties, bows and other types of accessories.
- Now lay out all your parts and play “mix & match.” See which parts of faces make a fun new person when put together.
- Once you have made a decision about which combination you like best, glue the pieces onto a piece of copy/printer paper. You have one Cubist Collage Portrait!
