Thirteen Days of Halloween Day 9: Artist Spotlight: Pablo Picasso Witches

What to do when a perfect Artists Spotlight opportunity presents itself (it's Pablo Picasso's birthday!) in the middle of a Thirteen Days of Halloween roll? Combine the two of course! I must not have been the only person who had this game plan (thankfully) because I found a wonderful article from Arts and Activities October 2005 (so we're going back to the archives for this project) called If Picasso Made Witches by Cynthia H. Sheeler. Now, I couldn't find this project on their website (other than in their article list of purchase archives), but I found a full image of the article on Pintrest (I love that place!).

I highly recommend reading the article, it's a super quick read and has lots of good information on how to get kids invested in art. In our club, I try to do a different focus art project each month, something that will engage the kids and teach them about an important figure in art history. This project is perfect for that and because it uses limited supplies, it's also very budget friendly.

Supplies Needed: 

Construction Paper

 - lots of scraps

 - two full sized sheets (any color)

 - 1-2 full sized sheets of black for the witch's hat

 - 12x18-ish (we use what we have so ours isn't quite 12x18)

Examples of Picasso's works (we used those listed in the article and I just found pictures through google)

 - Girl Before a Mirror

 - Woman with Book

 - The Dream

 - Dora Maar

Black Markers (permanent if you're a brave soul)

Glue or glue sticks

Simple Breakdown of the Project:

Take the two full sized sheets of paper together and cut matching ovals from them. These will be your face. Glue the first oval (blue in the example above) to your background paper and use the second to cut the profile image (orange in the example above). Use the black piece(s) of paper to create a wonderfully wonky witch hat and all of the scraps to make the rest of the facial features. Use the black marker to create hair and add any finishing touch details.

Does your club have an artists spotlight or a special arts program? Have you created a great project to share influential artists with your kids? Let me know!