These ethereal, soft Modigliani figures were done in oil pastel on brown craft paper and colored by direct observation from Modigliani's own paintings. This project exercised our observational drawing skills while eschewing everything we know about proper face proportions: super long neck, slit eyes with no pupil, eyes too high on the face.... what?!
Each student chose the figure they wished to draw. Their task was to draw it as closely to the original Modigliani as possible. We drew in pencil, then colored with oil pastel. We blended with our fingers, and added white to blend, soften and lighten areas, as well as used more that one color in all areas to create darker and lighter values.
We noted how Modigliani's clothes looked textured, and despite being quite dark, we could see greens and blues shining through.... so we too used greens and blues together with our black to mimic this effect. Similarly, with the hair, we used several colors layering and overlapping - browns and red, browns and oranges, and oranges with red and yellow, for example. This gives us a richness of texture and depth. We love how we can do this so easily with oil pastels. It really looks so much like the original oil paint! Backgrounds were also done using several colors and blending.
Once all coloring was complete, we went back over our pencil lines with pencil to bring back and emphasize our contour and detail lines.
What beauties! The kids were thrilled with their results, and a year on, I still hear that this was one of their 'favorite' projects.
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| Oil Pastel. Kids 7-12 |
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| Oil Pastel. Kids 7-9 |
Below: Amedeo Modigliani in chalk pastel. Focus on value, layering and blending chalk pastels.
Kids 5-7 years
Our little kids also had a go at Modigliani!
We used craft paper (sort of an ochre, light tan color) and drew our figures with extra long necks and high almond-shaped eyes. To get the right placement, we folded our paper in thirds horizontally and placed head in top third, neck in middle third and shoulders and chest in bottom third. We drew in pencil and colored with chalk pastel. We smeared and smudged with fingers, and added different values to create some shadowy areas. Especially in the hair, we were mindful of adding more than one color (red, brown, orange). Backgrounds were done in 2-3 similar (analogous colors and smudged). After coloring was complete we went over our face contour lines and details with a brown chalk pastel pencil. We traced our chest with black pastel, and added a smudge of rouge to the cheeks. I absolutely LOVE these Modigliani portraits from our littlest artists!
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| Chalk. Kids 5-7 |