Picasso Portraits for Kids

My students love learning about different artists and they had a lot of fun creating portraits in the style of Pablo Picasso. Before we began creating our own artworks, we looked at a bunch of different paintings by Picasso and talked about what made his work different from the artists who came before him. We discussed the term cubism and looked at a few works by other cubist artists like Georges Braques and Albert Gleizes.

Then we got ready to create our own Picasso masterpieces using construction paper and pastels. I got the idea for this project from this photo that I found on Pinterest...

(If anyone knows who took this photo then please let me know, so I can link back to the original source. I've seen a bunch of people pin this photo, but no one seems to know where it originally came from!)

As you can see, the photo shows pretty clear instructions on how to create your own Picasso portraits. I gave each of the kids a piece of construction paper to draw the outline of the face and neck, and then I gave them three pre-cut pieces of construction paper for the two eyes and nose. I had already drawn my own eyes and nose so they could see what they were supposed to look like, and I stuck those on the wall so they could use them as a reference. Some kids chose to draw their eyes and nose in their own way, which was totally fine, but being able to see what I had drawn helped a lot of the kids get started.

Once the students drew what they wanted on their pieces of smaller pieces of construction paper, they glued their eyes and nose onto their large piece of construction paper and then used pastels to colour in the rest of the face. They did such a great job and really seemed to understand how to give their pictures a cubist feel.

Here are some of the finished products!

These Picasso portraits are really easy to make and they look great hanging on the wall outside of our classroom!