Surrealist Collage Pattern Portraits

For our final work in our portrait unit, we completed a Surrealist-style collage drawing. We had previously spent a lot of time drawing realistic portraits and features so this time around we completely "cheated" with the face part of the work by starting with a magazine portrait (human or animal).

This artwork was of great inspiration for us as well as the Surrealist work of Dali and Kahlo. I used the steps found here to build this lesson from.

We used Crayola markers for the color wash in the background instead of the fancy ones mentioned in the post. Use water brushed over the marker color outline to create a bleeding effect. It's beautiful underneath the patterned overlay. 

Surrealist Portraits (& Frida!)

Realistic portraits are never a favorite project of 8th graders.  This lesson helps overcome those complaints by combining the skills and technique of drawing portraits with a Surrealist collage twist. We discuss Frida's work (and even though she did not consider herself a Surrealist painter) we talk about why she could be considered one. After the project is finished, we write a short artist statement to explain the story behind our portrait. 

Artist Trading Cards- Artists and Mediums #2

This is the second set of artist and mediums covered so far. 7th graders- we only went over Picasso and O'Keeffe on Thurs/Fri. We'll come back to the last two artists in a week or so.

Artists this time around are Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol. Our medium choices for creating the cards are blended oil pastel, tissue paper and glue, charcoal pencil with collage and Styrofoam printing. Students must also highlight one element and one principle of art in their cards. The slides below were reviewed in class.

Our Artist Trading Cards are done and ready to be mailed!

Our Artist Trading Cards are done and ready to be mailed! 

We had a great time making these and are so excited to see what school we'll be trading with. We should find out later this week. 

The cards look great displayed all together in the hallway. Check them out! Here is a quick summery of what Artist Trading Cards (ATC) are all about:

Originating in Switzerland over 15 years ago, an artist trading card (or ATC for short) is a tiny, original piece of art created with the intention of swapping or trading it with another artist, not selling it. The one rule an artist trading card must adhere to is the size. An ATC must be 2.5 x 3.5 inches. Why? That's the size of the original collectible- sports trading cards.

On the front of an ATC an artist creates an original work to showcase their art. On the back the artist puts their name, title of the ATC and the date it was created.

Artist trading cards can be made in any medium and using any technique, whether it's painting, drawing or collage. You are really limited only by your imagination!