How to Draw Picasso Portraits with Kids

We recently explored the work of artist David Hockney. I still love the beautiful quilt-like drawing my youngest daughter created. This time around we decided to take a look a true modern art master, Pablo Picasso. We have shared many creative art projects for kids and this one is a favourite of mine.

 

I adore Picasso. I actually have two pieces of his artwork...in poster form...hanging on my bedroom wall. I love the simplicity of his line drawings and we own "Hands with Bouquet" and "La Ronde". I clearly remember purchasing them during university and hanging them on my wall all those years ago. So, I decided it was time to introduce my girls to the art of Picasso...specifically his portraits during his cubist period.

 

I have mentioned that my youngest daughter is a bit of a perfectionist. She has a hard time drawing freely. When she draws, whatever she draws, must look exactly like the real thing. I thought that seeing the cubist work of Picasso would introduce her to an entirely new way of looking at the world. We discussed how Picasso's work evolved away from the work of realist artists...how he was trying to present an alternate vision of 3D objects in a very flat and 2D way. We examined a number of his cubist pieces and then the girls grabbed some paper and experimented with creating their own cubist portraits.

 

We decided the girls would draw portraits of each other, so they positioned themselves sitting across from one another.

First, I had the girls draw the shape of a head. On the head shape, they began by drawing one side of the face as they see it...in a realistic way.

Once the "real" side of the face was done, they then began drawing the other side of the face with hard, sharp, squared shapes. Finally, they added the background and colour to the portraits.

 

In the end, the portraits looked fabulous. No, they aren't the most cubist-looking pictures..but for my kids, these pictures are a giant leap away from reality. I especially love the cubist curly hair and the cubist ear. I love how this project had my girls seeing the world in a totally different way. This truly stretched their perspective and was challenging...and they had a lot of fun.

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