Mrs. Marshall Arts RI: Grade 4 Abstract Self Portraits

Picasso, Pablo. The Weeping Woman. 1937. Tate Museum, London, UK.

This odd portrait was created by Pablo Picasso in 1937. Grade 4 students studied this portrait and described it as "weird", "crazy", and "colorful". Since we determined that this painting is not realistic, we added ABSTRACT to our list of descriptive words. This portrait is not a SELF PORTRAIT because this is not a painting of Pablo Picasso, the creator of this piece. However, we used it as inspiration to create our own self-portraits using the art elements LINE and COLOR.

We began by using a ruler to draw a self portrait using only straight lines. This was a challenge because most of the details of the human face are curved lines! Using the ruler gave everyone a self portrait that was clearly abstract. We then added some extra lines to break up the composition further. Here is one in the first stages of line with a bit of color added to the student's braid.

The color scheme for this project consisted of ANALOGOUS colors, those that are beside each other on the color wheel. Students chose three to work with.

Green, blue, and purple are analogous colors and used in the student's portrait above.

Not only did we learn about analogous color schemes, but also about VALUE. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color. When a color goes from dark, to medium, to light that is called GRADATION. In each fragment of the self-portrait the student was required to include gradation with colored pencils using one of their three chosen colors.