Salvador Dali Portraits

The 'Stache is Back

I've blogged about my Salvador Dali's mustache lesson before (details here) but I have a few more photos to add to the amazingness that is this art project.  They make me smile so much!  As has been the theme this year, I didn't get many photos, but I still want to share what I did manage to snap.  So here we go:

Saints Art Contest

Iowa Catholic Radio's 'Our Catholic Schools Rock!' Art Contest--2015 Theme: Saints

So I've been extremely behind on my blogging and I have zero (good) excuses for that.  But I figured I might as well pick up where I'm at in the classroom and share what the kiddos have been up to!  When school started back up, I found an invitation for my students to participate in a Catholic art contest, my kids LOVE art contests and this was no exception.  

The contest is for K-8 students and is divided into various age categories.  I shared all of this info with my students and let them know that the contest's theme was "Saints."  I collected as many books on saints as I could get my hands on--I teach in a Catholic school, so this wasn't too tricky.  I just had to hit up a religion teacher, the library and our religious education library. I let the kids choose their saints that they wanted to depict and I encouraged them to put their own spin on their saint's portrait.  Some of the kids opted for emulating what they saw in the picture books and others played around with adding their own borders and backgrounds (which I especially loved).   They got to choose what medium they wanted to finish their artwork in, so I got to see a nice variety in styles too! This trimester I only have 8th graders in the middle school, so I taught this lesson to 4th, 5th and 8th grade.  I couldn't have been more proud of all of their hard work and effort that went into these drawings!  Enough said, not check out their finished work for yourself (warning, I'm about to flood this blog post with photos):

8th Grade Examples:

And I couldn't resist posting a few closeups:

         

 

     

     

5th Grade Examples:

And...More closeups:

  

  

4th Grade Examples:

And, finally, the last of the closeups:

 

 

 

 

Dali's Stache

The 'Stache is Back!

Salvador Dali's stache has returned and is as popular as ever!  I've taught this lesson for a few years now and I don't think it's one that I'll stop teaching any time soon.  The kids absolutely LOVE this one.  I even let them wear fake mustache glasses.  We draw relatively realistic faces with surreal backgrounds and I ask them to keep that in mind while painting with their watercolors.  We finish by adding a crazy mustache (pipe cleaner) at the end.  And it never fails to give outstanding results--all while learning a little art history!  My full lesson is better described in this post here.  

This Year's Stache Gallery:

Since all students work at a different pace, some of them weren't ready for their mustache when I glued them on.  In that case, I encouraged them to stick them straight up until they were finished painting--just to keep it out of the way

Notice the various surreal backgrounds--wavy pencils and crayons, dancing grapes and misc foods and melting bananas!

Those long legged peacocks were inspired by Dali's Elephants and the melting sports equipment by The Persistence of Memory 

I'm pretty sure this is a painting of me...but as a blonde.  First, the student asked me "Can I put paint on her face?  My person is an art teacher." and after noting how much I love dinosaurs, her background suddenly had surreal dinosaurs in the background and not to mention that I always wear my hair on the top of my head in a messy bun.  Love that I could offer a little inspiration (or at least think that I did)

This student used her mustache to spell out her name!

This one might as well be a portrait of Salvador Dali himself!

If the students finished early--I encouraged them to be inspired by surrealism and its dreamlike qualities with real items and asked that they invent a new animal or object by combining 3 or more animals and/or objects.  I also encourage them to give their new creature a name...ever met an elepenguicornelope?  (It's made from an elephant, penguin, unicorn and antelope)

More stache pics from other years
http://missartypants.blogspot.com/2016/01/salvador-dali-portraits.html