Doodlebug Dabblings: Modigliani self portraits

So after doing several traditional style portraits with the children at the North Vancouver Community Arts Council summer camp called "Art Yourself", it was time to let them break the rules.

This made one of the little six year old girls and her friends giggle. She was very excited when I told her we were going to be rule breakers. And she really embraced the concept of this project, laughing at each new aspect that I introduced.

So rewarding for me to see a reaction such as hers, worth more than all the money in the world.

So I put out several art works of Amedeo Modigliani for the students to observe and of course, just like when I did the Modigliani inspired "princesses" at my studio, they all immediately jumped on the elongated necks.

But then a very interesting thing happened, after listening to me harp that the eyes are halfway down the face, the nose halfway between the eyes and the chin, and the mouth halfway between the nose and the chin, they also clicked in right away that the nose was way too long and the eyes way too high.

Unlike my own children, they listened when I spoke!! And they now understood the given proportions of portrait work well enough to understand how to break them.

And so they started sketching their own self portraits inspired by Modigliani and when they were happy with them, I handed out chalk pastel on black pastel paper. They put some white chalk on the back of their sketches and then placed their final sketches on top of the black paper and traced them. When complete, I handed them a black oil pastel to trace over the white lines and they were off to the races with the chalks.

They LOVED the chalks.

While working with them, several of the campers asked if we could do all the rest of our projects in chalk. By the time they were finished, there were beautiful works of art and also children covered in a rainbow of color!

blue noses

orange chins

and a multitude of color on their hands.

My assistant volunteers extraordinaire, Jessica and Becca, and myself did not fair any better but it didn't matter when you see kids having that much fun.

So much fun that when given the opportunity on the last day to draw whatever they wanted, we had someone once again inspired by Modigliani's work and do yet another portrait in this style.