4th Grade Portraits Inspired by Modigliani

Last year, I ran across a lesson idea from another blog that I just had to try.  We were already doing a chalk pastel portrait using the Italian artist Armedeo Modigliani as inspiration, but I was having trouble trying to convey his style to the students.  By using white glue as a means to keep the chalk from spreading around and losing the form of the artworks, my 4th graders were able to follow the steps to creating their own, elongated forms for the head, neck, and shoulders of their self-portraits.  We discussed Modigliani's use of these elongated forms to create eye movement across the paper.  One of the main goals for an artist is to make a viewers' eyes move across the paper to create visual interest.  

Modigliani was excellent about giving what is usually a very static subject like a portrait more interest through his use of lines and shapes arranged on the paper.  The students began by creating a long, oval shape on their black papers and then started to add the neck and shoulders, trying to create visual interest by stretching the shapes in strange ways.

After tracing our lines with white glue and letting it dry, we were able to make a barrier to contain different chalk blends on the paper, keeping our portrait organized to accentuate our elongated shapes and visual interest points.  Hopefully, this lesson will be an excellent percursor to our future discussions about form and sculpture.