James Rizzi Birds

James Rizzi was an American pop artist, painter and sculptor. His themes convey pure joy and happiness, which what he felt about his art. He used strong lines and bright, vivid colors in his images, inviting the viewer to step into his fun world of art.

This project will be inspired by James Rizzi's bird paintings.

You will need paper, pencil, eraser and color - you can use crayons, oil pastels, watercolor paints - even markers. I'll go through the options in the video of the lesson below.

There's lots of variations you can try with this project. Look at the James Rizzi paintings and draw your own James Rizzi-inspired birds as well as following the directed draw. Instead of just color, give your birds some detail in their own background ...

Scroll through some of James Rizzi's bird images...

And now the project...

For this project, I'll take you through a directed draw to draw 3 different birds. If you need a little more time to work on any of the steps, just pause the video, finish the step and then continue.

In class, we usually draw 2 birds, color them and use watercolor for the background - as you'll see in my examples. However, you can decide for yourself how many birds you would like to draw and how you want to include them in your finished artwork.