“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”
-Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain in 1881. Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. Picasso loved to experiment and try different ways to express his art; he was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and illustrator. He created dishes out of ceramics and pottery and he was also a stage designer, poet, and playwright. As one of the most prolific artists of all time, it is estimated that Picasso, during a 75-year career span produced an estimated: 13,500 paintings, 100,000 graphic prints or engravings, 34,000 book illustrations, and 300 sculptures and ceramics.
Picasso’s painting style changed over the course of his life more than any other artist. Art historians have divided his work into different periods, The Blue Period, The Rose Period, The African Influenced Period and Cubism. Cubism is a 20th-century art movement pioneered by Pablo Picasso and his friend Georges Braque. Cubism is characterized in art as a way of seeing the subject from multiple perspectives.
For this project, we combined Picasso’s Blue period and in particular, this famous painting The Old Guitarist painted during his Blue period between 1903-1904. As well as combining elements from his cubist movements such as Girl with a Mandolin which was painted in 1910.
Students started with a scraped black underpainting or some of our classes students started with black paper. Students sketched in their guitar with white chalk pastels after placing a circle template in the middle of the painting. The contours of the guitar were formed by using the circle as a guide. Then using different colours of blue chalk pastels, students created a “cubist” background and coloured in each shape using a variety of blue and purple coloured pastels. Then using different shades of blue acrylic paints, finished off their piece by painting in the guitar and adding details like the frets to the neck of the guitar and outlining the cubist forms. If anyone was feeling the February Blues, these beautiful pieces would cheer you up. Amazing job everyone! Take a look at a few examples:
