Picasso Head

Summary

For today's activity we created a self portrait in the form of a Picasso painting using a website called Picasso Head. This site allows you to use their tools to create your very own masterpiece resembling Picasso's style of cubism. It's very simple to use and even someone like me, with very little artistic ability, can create something that looks artsy! I could have spent all evening playing around on this website, and I definitely plan to go back in and experiment with different shapes and colors. 

What I did

All I really had to do was click on the link and start experimenting. I dragged different shapes to the canvas and changed the sizes and colors until it looked how I wanted it to. This is what I ended up with...

 You can also view my painting in the gallery while you are browsing other artist's work. 

One "issue" I ran into was figuring out how to add hair to the over-sized head I chose. Many of the hair selections seemed to be for certain faces, and I couldn't figure out how to make it work until I realized there was a "rotate" feature that allowed me to position the hair exactly how I wanted it. The hair on my painting is now my favorite part because I got it to look wild and crazy, just like I wanted! Another other issue I ran into was figuring out the signature tool. I typed my name in the signature field and it showed up, but when I clicked "save" my name disappeared. I couldn't try it again without losing my painting so I just saved without it and took a snip on the gallery page so my name and title would be included.

How I would use it

As I was creating my portrait, I kept thinking about how much fun it would be for my students to use Picasso Head to create an image of a book character. For example, if we were reading Pride and Prejudice, I could take a day to bring in the class laptops and have them create their interpretation of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. I think this is something students would really enjoy and we could share our work with each other on the Smartboard so we could discuss why certain features were chosen. This activity would be fun, it would encourage classroom discussion, and students would be learning about character development through their eyes and the eyes of the author.

NETS Standard

The Picasso Head activity is best represented by NETS standard One because this activity promotes creativity and innovative thinking. If I incorporated the suggested activity I mentioned above into my lesson plans, students would use their knowledge of the book characters to create their very own character interpretations.