I'm so glad I decided to introduce the work of David Hockney to my group of 5th graders. I explained how Hockney was inspired by the Cubist movement in doing his photo collages. Each student could pick their own subject matter and divide it up in sections. They were encouraged to play with the zoom on the lens to get different distances of their subject. I think they came out great! I am particularly fond of the black cat, "Phoebe."
Each session I like to do a collage inspired by Eric Carle. Day 1 we work in stations, making unique textures and patterns on paper. We use combs, chopsticks, q-tips, cotton balls, splatter painting and more. Each child will have 4 different colored and patterened papers. For the fish collage we used sponges double dipped in blue and green to create our ocean. Day 2 we cut out our fish and add some tissue paper sea weed.
Cubist Portraits 2nd Graders
Again, one of my favorite lessons inspired by the cubist portrait project at Ms. Julie's Place. The hardest part of the project is drawing the profile down the middle of the face. I encouraged the kids to think of their face in terms of lumps and bumps (a large triangular pointed lump for the nose, 2 small bumps for the mouth) a la "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." Next, we broke the face up using geometric shapes, went over lines with a permanent marker and finally watercolor. I challenged them to try not to have a shape of one color touch a shape of the same color - a little tricky. This group of boys (no girls in this class) were big on personality, and it shows in their work.
I got the idea for these pop art self portraits from Modern Art for Kids. I decoupaged the computer printed photos to posterboard and they were ready for some graphic acrylic paint. We of course looked at some examples of Warhol's work to see how he used color and repetition to make a big impact.
