Fauve Artists

For a couple of weeks, my art classes were "wild beasts."  Matisse was one of the leaders of what came to be known as the fauve ("wild beast" in French) movement, which made realistic art done in non-realistic colors. For our subject, we used this lesson on large faces and painted with tempera on pizza box cardboard.

We began with a directed drawing from the face lesson. The kids drew in pencil on their cardboard. We talked about Matisse and Fauvism and looked at examples. After drawing, the kids copied over their lines in black marker, then painted, using unusual colors. Many people said these paintings reminded them of tribal masks.

After the paintings dried, we outlined again with the marker for definition. We had lots of fun with great results. This orange and green one was daughter W's.