Pablo Picasso

Did you know that Picasso's first word was 'pencil'?! We looked at Pablo Picasso this week and I'm sure he would have been pleased with the results! We watched a 3 minute BBC Bitesize video in which 'Picasso' explains how he had a wonderful idea...to include all angles of someone's face in the one portrait. The kids general opinion was that Picasso was 'weird' but they were excited at the prospect of making faces with loads of eyes! Using cut up magazines, they made face collages and delighted in creating some wacky faces. Then we looked at more examples of Picasso's style and agreed that 'weird' isn't necessarily a bad thing! It can be fun and interesting. I think that children are naturally intrigued by Picasso. So we moved onto self-portraits. Previously we've worked with acrylics for Pollock and water colours for Kandinsky and this week we used oil pastels. Children love oil pastels. They are vibrant and feel nice on the paper and are easy to blend together.The kids really grasped Picasso's 'weirdness' and made it their own. Dividing their portraits into sections and colouring different parts kept them engrossed for quite some time. A very enjoyable afternoon.