This was a crazy fun unit which I thought would be a disaster with my most challenging group of students, but it turned out to be a winner. We began with a series of sketchbook assignments to warm up. I found these short one-day assignments to be quite successful.
#1 Contour Line Drawing of a Shoe, Cut Up and Rearranged
#2 Magazine Head Collage
#3 Picasso Pal Drawing
#4, #5 and #6 Front, 3/4 and Side View Portraits of a Partner
*Thanks to my sponsor teachers at RHS for these ideas!
The portrait drawings were cut up and rearranged on a new sketchbook page to create Cubist-like arrangements. Students then redrew these compositions onto larger sheets of paper. We added onto our drawings with collage elements. These included:
- 1 profile and
- at least 3 facial features (cut from cardboard)
- areas of ‘texture’ (choice of newspaper, magazine pages, wallpaper pieces…)
We reviewed monochromatic colour mixing before painting our final portraits with this colour scheme. The final pieces are ridiculous and crazy, very fitting for this energetic class!
Gateway Art 