Category Archives: Pablo Picasso

1. Draw the front view shape of a person’s head on a piece of construction paper.  Use a black crayon or pastel.
2. Draw either a right or a profile view (side view) down the middle of the face.
3. Draw the front view of an eye on the front view side.  Draw a side view of an eye on the profile side.  Or, go wild and change the shape and placement of each eye.  Maybe you’ll put one near the forehead and the other closer to the nose.
4. Draw the mouth.  Change its normal shape and size.  You can even make one side smiling and the other side frowning.
5. Make a crazy hairstyle.  Draw each hair to show its direction.
6. Outline every line with a black oil pastel or crayon.  This will make the features stand out.
7. Color in all the parts of the face, skin and hair.  Color each side of the face a different color.

Let the children draw a face and color it with crayons, colored pencil or oil pastels.

Cut up the picture.

On a separate sheet of black construction paper have the children draw several angular shapes. Color them in.

Paste the facial features onto the page randomly.

Get pictures before class of each student and have them developed.

Let the children cut up the body parts into different pieces.

Let them glue the photo back together placing body parts in different locations.

See if you can take pictures of the children’s faces and have them developed before class.

Let the kids cut up their facial features and randomly paste onto  a piece of construction paper.

Start making geometric shapes and fill up the entire space. Trace with black permanent marker.

Color in all the areas with different crayons or oil pastels.

Each child was given a mirror to look at themselves.

On a letter size piece of paper have a line going right down the center and another line where the eyes would be located. Basically you are making a “t” on the page.

I would suggest making this “t” on the page in advance for the children. We let the children do it and it took up SO much time. A lot of erasing and repositioning going on. I never would have thought this. The “t”, while important, was not significant to the end result.

Using their pencils tell the kids to look in the mirror. Have the children look at what shape their face it.  Is their face round, oval or perhaps square?  If they think they have a long neck then they should exaggerate their neck. If they have large eyes make them big. Keep reminding them this is a fun exercise to look at themselves and draw.

Trace everything just drawn in black marker.

Then they color the portrait in with colored pencils.

It’s hard for some of the kids to actually spend any time looking at themselves in a mirror. Keep encouraging them and give them COMPLIMENTARY ideas for their drawing. Ideas like, “You have such beautiful curly hair.  You might want to bring attention to that in your portrait”. Or, ask them to look closely at their eyes in the mirror and see what the shape looks like.  Or, do they have bangs? Or, glasses?  They may want their nose to be a swirl.   They need help to see past what they are used to seeing in the mirror. This was a really interesting project to watch and notice how little we see how interesting we actually are.

You will want to keep the kids on track here. Letting them know they will have to finish up drawing themselves soon to move on to the coloring part.