Happy Birthday Pablo Picasso!

If Picasso were still around today, it would be his 135th birthday- but we can still celebrate his art legacy as one of the world's most famous and accomplished artists. In honor of this special day, my students are getting a crash course in Picasso and creating a Funny Face Picasso Plate, all in one session! This 45 minute lesson includes a brief history that includes his most famous art periods, a timeline of self-portraits, and a fun painting lesson focusing on expressive color, mixing tints, and a "cubist" face - all on a paper plate, honoring some of my favorite pieces of Picasso's - his painted ceramic plates.
After our "PicassoPoint" presentation, we covered our plates in tint mixtures, sharing thoughts of how the colors represented feelings as in the artist's Blue and Rose periods. We used magazines for our palettes since multiple classes were doing this activity - easy to tear off and start fresh when needed. Next, we used smaller brushes dipped in black to create the facial features, remembering that Picasso specialized in mixing up the parts of the face - a cubist technique. Picasso mastered realistic portraits in his teen years, so in most of his adult life he moved on to painting from his vivid imagination to challenge himself. We focused on enjoying ourselves and having fun, just like Picasso might have done on his birthday!