Artists like Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh and Gustav Klimt are often the most popular artists to be used in classroom art lessons. This means that children grow up with the knowledge of only a handful of artists and even with them have only ever looked at a handful of images and not that artists full body of work.
Below are some project ideas inspired by these artists but from looking at their sketches, drawings, studies, sculputres etc. The artwork they are not most famed for.
Pablo Picasso
Picasso uses animals regularly in his pottery, drawings, sculputres and paintings for example 'Guernica'. In this controversial painting about war, he uses a bull to symbolise a soldier and a horse to represent the civilian who suffers in conflict.
Organise a trip to Blackpool Zoo and take a sketch pad along. Sketch and take photos of the animals there. Take them back into class and create sculputres using plaster of paris, papier mache or clay.
Vincent Van Gogh and Gustav Klimt
Both Van Gogh and Klimt have created some beautiful drawings and paintings of trees.
Organise a trip to Stanley Park, Blackpool and take with you several rolls of lining paper, a bamboo stick for everyone, charcoal sticks and masking tape. Tape the charcoal to the end of the bamboo stick and roll the length of the lining paper out along the ground. Make sure you are in a good spot for seeing trees. Line everyone up along the paper and start drawing the trees and surrounding. Everyone will be standing up and have a long stick to draw with so there will be some interesting line making happening.
When you get back to school, you can display the long drawing in the classroom, hall or length of the corridor.
