Cubism - Picasso

Pablo Picasso is one of the most famous artists of all time world wide. He is known for many contributions with cubism as one of his greatest works during the 1900s (or early 20th century). Cubism first became popular after Paul Cezannes 3D light and hash drawings using shading; Cezanne is given credit for inspiring many artists including Picasso who stretched the abilities of 3D works into abstract art pieces using cubism.

So what is cubism? If you google the definitions online, the definitions are a bit complex and broad. In this session, lets figure out what cubism is by exploring what it looks like to us first... lets look at Picassos work. Do you see natural shapes or geometric shapes?

This Man with a Pipe Art Design is at the Art Institute in Chicago.

Things to think about when looking at Picasso's art.... Does Picasso's art draw your eye in one direction or many? Looking at the violin do the layers properly connect or are they distorted? Would you suggest they create optical illusions of art pieces? How?

"Hey Ham Look! I'm Picasso!"

Yes, Even Potato Head in Toy Story knows and can recognize Picasso! "The messy face artist!"

We study geometry for architecture, engineering, and medicine. Geometry helps ups learn about the pieces of a larger successful result and how we can use those pieces to gain knowledge for creation and changes. We learn about ABCs to read so we learn about Geometry to understand how things build together successfully. Picasso's art does the same for art perspective... he uses several layers and several sizes and shading to create a masterpiece with different views and pieces. It created a huge modern art movement for so many artists who are fascinated with 3D perspective in art.

Project Description:

For this project you will create a face or self portrait using the cubism layered technique with pastels and colored paper. Here are the steps to guide you through. Remember to put name labels on the back and put your name on the front too!

Step 1 - Draw the face outline with an oil pastel. Don't worry, be messy! GO BIG (not small).

Step 2: Cut colored papers into squares, rectangles, or triangles and draw eyes, noses, mouths, ears on them with the pastels (many layered colors produce best results). You choose whatever you wish to "cube" up.

Step 3: Glue them together on your face outline and fill in the rest of the details with patterns, line and color or more layers until your face is filled in or time is up!

Student Examples!!

Max Hover

Olivia Hayes

Sophia Salas

Madison Raper

Cade Stout

Erin Scott

Uliana Gillis

Kennedy Martinez

Teacher supplies needed - Scissors and Glue sticks

Supplies - Name Labels, Colored cardstock for the main paper (8x10 or 9x12), then several colored papers for the cubism shapes, class pack oil pastels, and ready to hang!!

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