1st graders studying the artwork of Romero Britto. He is an artist originally from Brazil that now lives and works in the United States.  His work has elements of pop art, street art and full of bright colors and kid-friendly images.  You can see some of his work by clicking here.  We talked about what we saw:  bright colors, patterns, black outlines, items (fish, people, books, flowers, etc).  We talked about why we thought Mr. Britto made his paintings. I always like this part of the conversation. Kids said many things like: because he likes to make art, because art is fun so he makes his pictures fun, to make people feel happy, because he likes fish, to show how he feels, etc.

Then we tried to create a painting in the style of Romero Britto.  Each student picked an animal (or made one up) and filled it with patterns.  We drew with black crayons and then painted.  The kids were practicing using the right tool for the right space (big space=big brush, little space =  little brush) and cleaning their brushes between colors.  They painted their patterns different colors than their background spaces.  Once the paintings were dry, we re-outlined with black oil pastel.  Some classes tried watercolor resist and others tried tempera. I think the tempera worked a little better but both results were nice.  When the creatures were dry, we cut them out and glued them onto a colored paper to make them really pop out and grab their audience’s attention.

Sometimes all it takes to move a piece from great to fantastic is to cut it out and add a colored background-