Matisse Collages

After a trip to the Detroit Institute of Art, I was inspired. I was fortunate enough to see a traveling show on the collage work of Matisse and Picasso. It was truly amazing! I wanted to bring that creativity into the classroom and inspire the students to use their imagination and creativity to create pieces of art, just like the fabulous Matisse! That's when I got the idea for Matisse inspired Fall Harvest Collages!

 

 

For this project I worked with 4th grade students who were learning about the growth and development cycle of plants in their science classrooms. We discussed the differences between fruits and vegetables, along with seasonal food. Students were excited to tell me all about their pumpkin carving experiments. We focused on observation drawings from actual gourdes, pumpkins, squash, and apples. Students learned about contour lines as they concentrated on the outline and detail of each harvest food item as they sketched. To boost their drawing confidence, I projected what they considered their best work on the board and cycled through all the images. As a class we discussed positive attributes of each drawing.

 

I introduced the wonderful Matisse, and students had a fun time saying his name. They were in awe of his bright and colorful collage work and had a blast trying to figure out different abstracted shapes within certain work. We discussed the meaning of collage, and how an artist would create a collage from paper alone.

 

The project involves students creating a collage involving objects from the Fall Harvest. Each collage will contain at least 3 fruit/vegetables, along with pattern and design. Students are to focus on creating a composition that is active and moves the viewer's eye throughout. Students will also continue to work on their craftsmanship qualities and pay special attention to cutting out design elements from construction paper, and making sure that glue is not overused.

 

 

For added fun, students filled their harvest fruit/vegetable shapes in with pattern. Some students chose to have the pattern the same color as the construction paper for slight texture, while others used contrasting colors for greater emphasis.

 

 

Hard at work creating amazing collages! Hey, where did that pumpkin face come from?! I had to instruct students again and again not to add jack-o-lantern faces to their pumpkin shapes. It must have been very difficult to resist!

 

After two class periods, and a ton of scrap construction paper, there was success! Students created wonderful collage pieces inspired by Matisse and the Fall Harvest that included bright colors, patterns, overlapping shapes, and contour lines. I think they did an excellent job!