Jean Miro Scultpures

I'm a sucker for all things crazy and Joan Miro's characters are no exception.  I wanted to do something a little different with my fourth graders while still introducing them to Miro's work.  I ended up stumbling upon a wonderful three-dimensional, Miro inspired, art lesson via a quick google search and knew I had to try this lesson (original idea is from this site).

It was great!  The kids each started with 3 small rectangles of scrap poster board (something that every art teacher has laying around and isn't ever sure when/why they'll use it, but still refuses to toss it out).  After learning a little about Miro and his style, focusing mainly on his unique looking characters and their structure, the kids drew one character on each piece of poster board with a sharpie marker.

They then painted their characters with bold colors and trimmed up the edges to match the characters better. When the paint was dry, they flipped their characters over and painted the backs a solid color.  When that dried, I showed them how to cut small slits in their characters to create a freestanding sculpture.  Positioning the characters so that they would stand was probably the hardest part for the kids, but they did great!  I love how they turned out!  It was almost as though the individual 2D characters combined forces to create one ultimate Miro character.  The kids had a great time and I think they were most excited that they had created a three-dimensional piece of artwork!