Madame Matisse Never Looked So Good!

Students entered the darkened classroom to behold Madame Matisse, projected as a four foot monstrosity on the wall. These young teens, 13 and 14 year olds, first demand to know if "it's" a man or woman; her samurai hair and dense brows confuse them. Study sketches of master works are a great way to get your students to closely examine art work. They make so many cool discoveries.
In preparation for creating their own original drawings with dry pastels I had students make study sketches of Madame Matisse. My 7th and 8th graders found her green face stripe and hair style quite hilarious, but as they worked they began to discover interesting, more subtle details: the blue shapes in her hair, such as the triangle just above the forehead, the stripe of red reflected light at the hairline, the green and cream triangles that form her neck. Efforts at matching line and shape and color resulted in students gaining a deeper understanding of both Matisse's paintings as well as using pastels to create a variety of effects.