Famous Artists Week, Part II

This week, we are taking the Kansas State Math Assessments! We are going to TACKLE THE TEST!

In the afternoons each day, we are going to study a famous artists: Georgia O'Keefe, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Jackson Pollock, Wang Yani and Pablo Picasso.

Georges Seurat
-Georges Seurat is a French artist, famous for pointillism. He created large paintings made up of individual dots/points that come together to create a larger picture. Georges Seurat painted both portraits and scenes.
-Students can create their very own Seurat-inspired art with the help of sandpaper. Students use crayons to create a simple drawing on a piece of sandpaper. They must draw very hard with their crayons. Once their drawing is complete, cover it with white paper and iron over two (you may add another paper or wax paper to be used as a buffer for the iron heat). The crayon melts onto the white paper in a pointillism design!
Student creations:

Wang Yani
-Wang Yani was a child prodigy, born in China. She used water colors to paint monkeys and baboons. Click here to watch a short clip about her work.
-Students use brown and red water colors to paint a Wang Yani monkey. Start at the head and swoop down, over the back and into the tail. For the body, swirl or loop brown paint; then add four legs to the monkey. The head of the monkey looks a little like a heart, because of the bump for the nose. Let the pain completely dry and add the eye, nose, mouth, and claws with black marker.
-Student can also add a "chop" to their paintings. Have them make a symbol on a small piece of clay and use a red ink pad to mark their and others' paintings.
Teacher Model:

Student creations:

Pablo Picasso
-Picasso did many self-portraits, some are life-like while others are abstract. We will be creating an abstract portait for art!
-This is a project in which students can get really creative! The only directions I gave is the background paper and it was to be an abstract portrait of a person. I did purposely not give them any "normal" portrait colors: peach, brown, white, black, etc. I wanted to be sure this was not a life-like creation. The students used paint and construction paper to make the portrait.
-Students may also create a Picasso-like self-portrait on PicassoHead.com.
Teacher Model:
(not completely done, I added a swirling background as well)

Student creations: