Illustration Picasso Style.

One of the artists we study in our third-grade curriculum is Pablo Picasso. After several years of teaching my students about Picasso's life and evolving style in the same way, I needed a fresh approach to the subject.

Last year, about the time I was preparing to do my annual Picasso project, our school was visited by a very interesting author/illustrator named Robert Bender. He is the author of several children's books, including A Most Unusual Lunch, The Preposterous Rhinoceros, and The A to Z Beasty Jamboree. I decided to incorporate his unique technique of cell animation illustration into my Picasso lesson. The results were fantastic!

Mr. Bender suggested that we use oil pastels on our projects instead of the more expensive cell animation paints that he uses, and 8 1/2 x 11" (22 x 28 cm) clear transparency film for photocopiers.

We first did a pencil sketch of ourselves on manila paper, looking at numerous examples of Picasso's portrait work for reference. We exaggerated interesting parts of our own face, hair, or clothing. The students had lots of laughs moving their facial features to different places on their heads to simulate a Cubist style.

When the sketches were complete, we took a thick-tipped black marker and traced over all of the pencil lines. This was done twice, with the second line of the marker tip slightly overlapping the first line to increase the line's width. Lines ended up being about 1/4" thick.

The transparency sheet was then taped over the sketch at the top and the bottom to hold the two sheets together. The next step involved using the oil pastels to color inside the thick black marker lines directly onto the transparency. I encouraged students to experiment with overlapping color and color mixing. Students had to carefully make their strokes come right to the very edge of the black line, but not over the top of them. We kept an 8 x 10 1/2" (20 x 27 cm) black sheet of construction paper handy for the students to slip between the sketch and the acetate from time to time. This way they could see both their progress and where they needed to add more oil pastels. We also made sure that we kept a cover sheet over the top of the areas we had already colored to avoid smudging.

When everything was colored, we detached the sketch from the transparency, turned the artwork over, and placed a black 8 1/2 x 11" (22 x 28 cm) sheet of fadeless paper underneath the transparency to protect the pastels from smudging and smearing. Wherever students left the lines on the transparency clear, the black backing paper showed through as black lines.

Students were thrilled with the results. We sent our finished works to Robert Bender, and he was very supportive of our efforts. He even autographed many of the third-graders works and made wonderful comments on the back of all of them.

NATIONAL STANDARD

Students use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories.

Reba Buck Rohrer is an art teacher at Milton Elementary School in Milton, Pennsylvania.