5th Grade: Picasso Blue Period Guitars

This unit could definitely be done with younger grades, but I went more in depth with abstraction and creating mood in an artwork with 5th graders. I did it with this age because of the time I had with them (five classes) and they had just done something observational, so I wanted them to do 

something more hands-on.

The artist example was Picasso (obviously) and on the first day, before any instruction, the students filled out a see, think, wonder worksheet about this artwork. They filled it out again on the last day for my evidence of student learning. 

On the first day, we talked about how color can be used to show mood and feelings in a work of art. I had the students pick a mood word from the bucket, which they had to paint non-objectively. 

Later, the students had to guess the mood that was painted. (From top left to bottom right: anxious, playful, mellow, jealous, angry, and gloomy).

On the second day, the students learned about different ways to abstract an object. They made a few practice sketches (student example above). Then we talked about all the parts on a guitar (using my examples and my ukulele to help them visualize how I abstracted the different parts). Then, they made a larger sketch of what they wanted their final piece to look like (student example below). 

Lastly, they transferred their guitar's outline onto their final, large paper. 

On the third day, we talked about tints and shades. The students painted their guitar shape with either a tint or a shade of blue after practicing making a gradient. 

 On the last two days we talked about monochromatic and mixed media artwork. Then they cut paper and news paper to create their guitar parts, adding their strings last. Then they filled out a self assessment and an artist statement about their guitar. 

Some student examples are pictured below.