Roy Lichtenstein's "Still-Life with Picasso" is a fine marriage of pop art elements and Picasso's abstracted portrait drawing style. This pop artist friend of Warhol's (NY 1923-1997) was inspired by advertising, cartoons and comics. He used 'Ben-Day' dots to recreate that pixelated, old-fashioned cartoon look. He liked to mimic the work and style of iconic artists like Matisse and Picasso, and add his own style to it. For this project we considered important art principles such as contrast, balance, composition and variety. We looked at Lichtenstein's use of color, shape and line. Our fruit has thick bold black outlines, like cartoons. Our portrait is Picasso-inspired. And our dots, use of bold black line and primary colors scream Pop Art!
Process:
No pencils and erasers were allowed! We drew our Picasso-inspired face directly with marker on large drawing paper. Forgoing erasers makes us think more carefully about our line choices. We problem-solved about how to correct or improve problem areas, just like 'real' artists. We then drew a large vase on drawing paper, and several brushes in different sizes. We cut these out and set them aside.
We drew fruit on red and yellow construction paper, and outlined these in thick, black lines which remind us of advertising, comics and cartoons.
We cut out bits of paper in 'Ben-Day' dots to use as table cloths, cheeks, background elements, shadows on brushes and vases, or parts of our portrait's shirt. I pre-made this dotted paper by painting and printing bubble wrap. I also printed some dot paper from the web.
The curtain in the background was done with strips of red and yellow paper. These were also pre-cut.
When all our elements were drawn and cut, we assembled and pasted them on black paper. This was where thinking about composition was really important. Students were encouraged to overlap elements and to lead the eye to important areas in their composition using directional line. Notice how some students used strips of colored paper to lead our eye up to the vase.
Lichtenstein's ode to Picasso reminds us that artists are continually inspired by earlier generations of artists.
Thanks to Patty Palmer from Deep Space Sparkle for inspiring this project.
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| Kids ages 6-9 |
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| Kids aged 8-12 |
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| Student aged 8 |
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| Student aged 11 |