Do you want to add some art history into your 1st grade curriculum? Here's a lesson on portrait making, that adds some Salvador Dali and Surrealism into the mix. Not a bad combo.
This lesson starts out with a Keynote that features of few of Dali's paintings. The Persistence of Memory, The Elephants- to name a few. We discuss Surrealism, imagination and the effect that dreams had on the Surrealistic art movement while looking at the slides of his art work. The kids also got to share some of the "Surrealistic' dreams they've had in the past.
We then took a look of some photos of Dali in a variety if eccentric poses and discussed what a portrait is. Which, of course, led to a discussion about his mustache. We also took note that he wore a black suit in a lot of the photos.
Next come the portraits! We drew them on manila paper, colored them in with crayons and cut them out. They were mounted onto various colored paper backgrounds. They then got a piece of black construction paper, folded it in half and drew a half mustache using an organic, curvy shape.
Here are a few more of the finished portraits!
Take a look.
If you want to see how the portraits are displayed you can check out this post here.
What do you think of our Salvador Dali portraits? Would they work in your art class? You can comment below.
