Two-Faced Art

1. Introduce students to the work of Pablo Picasso. Share Veronica Massenot's The Three Musicians: A Children's Book Inspired by Pablo Picasso. During the read aloud, discuss Picasso’s art career, viewed through the book's illustrations. Ask students to share their their responses to the illustrations. Provide Internet photographs of several of Picasso's well-known pieces, focusing on his Cubist era portrait paintings. What shapes are in these paintings? How are the faces portrayed?
2. Provide students with two differently colored pieces of construction paper and Crayola Washable Markers. On the two different pieces of construction paper, students use markers to draw the faces of two different people. Encourage them to use different types of lines when making the drawings, keeping in mind what they have experienced of Picasso's work. Make thick lines by drawing with the side of the marker and thin lines by drawing with the tip. Create different effects by drawing squiggly, jagged, wavy or bumpy lines with the side of the marker.
3. Use scissors to cut out the facial features from each of the portraits. On a separate, third piece of construction paper, arrange some facial features from each of the portraits to make a new, combined face.
4. Glue the features into place to create a collage. Add additional details with markers to complete the Cubist-inspired design.
5. Students compose a short paragraph describing how they infused Picasso's Cubism techniques into their final piece. Post student writing with artwork on a classroom bulletin board or in a school hallway.

LA: Read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grade level text complexity band independently and proficiently.

LA: Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and refocusing the inquiry when appropriate.

LA: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.

MATH: Classify two-dimensional figures into categories based on their properties.

SS: Describe ways in which language, stories, folktales, music, and artistic creations serve as expressions of culture and influence behavior of people living in a particular culture.

SS: Show how learning and physical development affect behavior.

SS: Explore factors that contribute to one's personal identity such as interests, capabilities, and perceptions.

VA: Generalize about the effects of visual structures and functions and reflect upon these effects in personal work.

VA: Integrate visual, spatial, and temporal concepts with content to communicate intended meaning in artworks.

VA: Analyze contemporary and historic meanings in specific artworks through cultural and aesthetic inquiry.

VA: Know and compare the characteristics of artworks in various eras and cultures.

VA: Describe ways in which the principles and subject matter of other disciplines taught in the school are interrelated with the visual arts.

Possible classroom resources include: Who Was Pablo Picasso? by True Kelley; Pablo Picasso: Breaking All the Rules by True Kelley; A Day with Picasso (Adventures in Art) by Suzanne Pfleger; Cubism (Art Revolutions) by Linda Bolton; Cubists (Artists in Profile) by Jeremy Wallis

Encourage students to investigate the Cubist movement begun in the early 1900s. What contributions does this art movement add to the art world? How did Picasso participate in this movement? What other artists are known in connection with Cubism?

Students use their mathematical knowledge of the coordinate grid to graph their Two-Faced Art prior to committing their talents to art paper. Discuss with classmates how this process connects math and artistic knowledge.

Students investigate Picasso's Blue Period. Organize research into an electronic format for presentation to classmates.