Pop Art Grumpy Cats

I had the pleasure of leading Mr. Reardon's 4th grade class in a lesson about pop art. First, I explained how pop art is a movement that surfaced in 1950's, and challenges traditional art by using imagery from popular culture, such as subject matter used in advertising and the news. Also, pop art usually has a visual "pop" by using bright, vibrant colors with simplified, iconic forms and plenty of contrast. I had print outs of examples of pop art for each table of students to reference.

For our subject matter, we used Grumpy Cat. How fun is that? Many of the students weren't familiar with Grumpy cat, so I was lucky enough to show them examples of Grumpy Cat memes. The students were very excited!  

To begin, I asked them to put their names on the back of their watercolor paper. Then, I lead them through a step-by-step process on how to draw Grumpy Cat that I found here. I drew Grumpy Cat on the white board, and the students drew him using pencil.

Then the students traced their cats using a thick, black Sharpie, and colored the pupils of the eyes black. I provided the students with a limited color palette of tempera paints. Each table of students got to work with 4 different bright colors, and I encouraged them to consider the white of the paper a color, too. I instructed them to choose their colors wisely, and not to let any of their colors touch each other, so the shapes that made up their Grumpy Cats wouldn't blend together. When they were finished, we let the paintings dry on the drying rack.

Because the paint covered up the Sharpie lines, I asked Mr. Reardon to let them retrace their Sharpie lines when they were dry. This gave the finishing contrast that was necessary to pop!

We hung the finished pieces in the hallway by the Staff Lounge. They look great! Like Andy Warhol's Marilyns, only much grumpier!  Hope you have a chance to see our Grumpy Cats while they're on dislplay this month.