Paul Klee Cubism Castles!

Paul Klee with 3rd Grade

Today was my last art lesson with my 3rd graders of the school year! :( So crazy! I'm glad it was a fun one!! Read on to see how we made these beautiful Paul Klee inspired castles!

I showed them a slideshow of Klee's more Cubist pieces, and as always, asked the kids to use their powers of observation to practice analyzing art.   It was the last art lesson I taught them this year, so by now they're getting good at this. They surprise me sometimes with the things they notice - "It's like, abstract, but you can still see buildings some places", "He likes to put bright colors next to more boring ones", "He has a theme of a color and then puts a few other random colors with them, like mostly purple and blue, but then some random yellows". Aw, brilliant! Kids can analyze art, you just have to give them some vocabulary and let them do it.

ALL YOU NEED: Orange paper and oil pastels!

• To make our Klee Castles, we talked about Geometric vs. Organic shapes. 

• Then, we talked about what kinds of things we might see on a castle. 

• Then, on orange paper, kids drew their castles with pencil, using rulers to make straight lines.

• Then, they broke their castles up into smaller geometric shapes. 

• Then, they filled in each shape with a different color of oil pastel.

• Finally, all their shapes were outlined with either black or dark blue oil pastel. 

AREN"T THESE SO AMAZING?! I loved how they turned out :) Have fun!!!