Masks and Modigliani

At the start of Year 3, we looked at portraits. The children revisited drawing faces in the correct proportions that they had practised in Year 2, before beginning their own half face portraits - first in pencil then using charcoal and chalk. They are now all proudly displayed in their classrooms. 

We laminated them, to keep them safe for the year, so the pictures are a little shiny in these photos.

Here are some less shiny photocopied ones from our sketchbooks, showing how we practised drawing and shading half faces of other people, then ourselves, before we attempted our chalk and charcoal versions.

As the children's topic was Chocolate, they had done some research on Ghana in West Africa. It was also Black History Month in October, so to link to both of these, we looked at the influence of African Art of European artists in our study Masks and Modigliani before we looked at patterns in nature and West African fabrics.

We first looked at African masks and sketched them, just like Modigliani, before having a go at his mask-style portraits in our sketchbooks.

Finally, we used chalk pastels to recreate some of Modigliani's portraits, trying to blend our colours carefully.

Our work became a display in the corridor last term, so we could tell everyone about Modigliani and have a mini exhibition of our own.