Degas + Picasso = “Degasso”

For this project, we’ll be squashing together the Impressionist ballerinas of Degas with Picasso’s Cubist portraits to make pastel Cubist ballerinas!

Info:

Edgar Degas lived from 1834 – 1917.  His father wanted him to be a lawyer, but he ended up studying art in France and Italy.  He was friends with a lot of Impressionists, but he preferred to paint indoor scenes—especially of ballerinas—using pastel colors.

Pablo Picasso lived from 1881 – 1973. He started drawing in childhood—apparently his first word was “pencil” in Spanish. In his twenties he switched to a new kind of painting called Cubism, where the artist draws the subject from lots of different angles at the same time.

Age: 5+          Topic: art history          Duration: 1 hour          Supervision: low

Materials:

• 9” x 12” drawing paper
• pencil
• chalk pastels (or colored pencils)
• spray fixative or hairspray
• optional: scissors & gluesticks
• optional: 9″ x 12″ colored construction paper

Step 1: Draw a ballerina, but draw her body parts as if they don’t go together.  (Cubism is all about drawing things from a bunch of different angles in the same picture.)  Put her feet on backwards, bend her legs the wrong way, maybe put both arms on the same side of her body–just have fun with it.  But make sure to draw her face from two different angles like in  Girl Before a Mirror (by Pablo Picasso).

*Step 1 (for younger children): Draw a ballerina really large on your paper.

Step 2: Draw a stage for your ballerina. Since Cubism ignores all the rules of perspective, draw everything “wrong.” Maybe the curtains are upside-down, or the stage is crooked.

Step 3: Color your picture using short, sketchy strokes of a chalk pastel (or colored pencil). Make small lines of two different colors right next to each other to “mix” a new color like the Impressionists did.

Step 4: Have an adult spray your drawing with fixative or hairspray. This will keep your drawing from smudging.

*Step 5 (for younger children): Cut your picture into at least 6 pieces. Glue them to a colored piece of paper, either crooked or in the wrong order!

Advertisement