Picasso Rooster

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I love doing Picasso for my art classes because kids are always fascinated with his crazy faces and the variety of art that he created over his lifetime. Recently while searching for a fun animal project to do I came across some lessons based on Picasso's Rooster paintings. The project below I did in a small class over Christmas break with 7 students, ages 9-15. All of them turned out great as you can see! We started with a practice drawing of Picasso's painting. I gave them each a copy of his painting

and had them mark off sections with a pencil-they measured the head from the comb down using their pencils as a ruler. Then I had them mark off that same distance down the rest of the rooster. We started the practice drawing with the comb and lined up the sections so that the picture came out in proportion.

 This step really helped when we transferred their drawings to a large canvas. I had them use a yellow nu pastel to do the sketch on the canvas-following the same measuring system. The nu pastel worked great as it was easy to see, but could be erased with a damp paper towel is they needed to. We used an expo marker as a measuring stick as it was just the right size to get a rooster that fit the whole canvas. We did the background first with yellow acrylic mixed with matte medium to allow them some blending time, then we added some blue. Next we base coated the body and tail feathers with yellow. And then proceeded with the rest of the colors and features until we had everything filled in, using Picasso's painting as a guide.We added the black outline last and some touches of white.