Picasso Faces

This particular lesson used clay to make Picasso faces that focused on Cubism and modern art. The class began by rolling out clay between two boards so everyone's slab was the same width. Then, we cut out a face shape using pottery tools and sectioned off our face into four sections, creating different designs in each. These designs were made using tools, pencils, hair brushes, and anything else we could think of. Then, we took the clay scraps from cutting out the face, rolled it out again, and created the eyes, nose and mouth. The face features were attacted by scoring the back of them and using water. We then painted the whole face with black paint. Once it was dry, we had to come back on our own time and paint each section and the face features with different colors.

As an extension activity, I would begin by skipping the whole step of painting the face black and just paint with colors right away. This would save a lot of time and would be more effective since elementary or middle school students could not come back after school hours to complete their project. This would also allow for the Picasso face to be a one day lesson. Other things that could be made using the same techniques are animals, objects, letters, etc.