Egg Head and the Green Stripe

One hundred years ago Henri Matisse painted a portrait of his wife with a green stripe down middle of her nose. In the last month I've been chatting with students age 3-11 about this portrait. I used the portrait as a starting point for drawing heads, and as an asymmetrical conclusion after our symmetrical butterfly projects. Since the students are also in drama class and use face paints, they assume Madame Matisse is wearing face paint to act out a story. They think she is wearing a strange blue hat, or at least a wig, and also that she is probably a boy. We visit a little about Fauvism. Matisse was one of the artists dubbed a fauve, or wild animal, because he used wild colors. Madame Matisse's face is a different color on the left side than the right, and so is the wall behind her.I let a plastic Easter egg teach the rest of the lesson. "Egg Head" tells the kids that heads are ovals, not circles, and the heads are taller than they are wide. Egg Head can demonstrate this easily, and the kids also see the top is rounded, but the chinny-chin-chin is a little pointed. Even though he is brainless, Egg Head can pop his top to remind kids that our skulls are structured to protect our brains. That is a good thing for all of us to remember!Egg Head can also show students that when he pops his top, his facial features all appear on the bottom part of the egg. In fact, where the plastic egg separates is where the top of your ears and your eyebrows should be to make a face look right. We practice drawing some egg heads of our own, putting in the line where the egg opens, then we are ready to paint.I have lots of 18x24" paper left at the end of this year, so we are going to paint Giant Egg Heads With Green Stripes!

The kids all want to play Pass the Paint* one last time, so I fix up 14 cups of "wild animal" Fauve temperas. We review the "rules" to Pass the Paint, and emphasize that when we get the green paint we will paint the green stripe down the nose of our Giant Egg Head. We are all ready to create some of the most exciting paintings of the whole year!Displaying these portraits has been great fun. They are not copies of Matisse's portrait, but it's easy to see how the kids applied the lesson to their own creations. I just returned from a trip to the McNay Museum in San Antonio where I saw two portraits by the Russian artist von Jawlensky. They looked so much like the students' Giant Egg Heads with Green Stripes that I had to smile. Two places to find the Portrait of Mde. Matisse are over there in the links.