Fantastic Fauve Faces
Jennifer Nessom
The wonderful book, How Are You Peeling? Foods with Moods by Saxton Freymann and Joost Elffers inspired a les- In the next lesson, we reviewed
Students completed their drawings
what they learned and they chose one with watercolor. When the paintings
of their four drawings to enlarge on
were dry, they chose to define lines
18 x 24" ( 46 x 61 cm) white paper. The and shapes with oil pastels. After
son on feelings and expressions for my drawing was outlined with colors they completing this project, students were
second-grade students. Many students associated with certain moods, such
better able to recognize the emotion
at my school have difficult lives and
as red for anger and blue for sadness. I in each other’s work and were a little
lots of emotional baggage, resulting in pointed out that these same colors can closer to understanding their own
behavioral problems at school.
also create the opposite effect depend- feelings as well as those of others.
Learning About Emotions
This lesson was a way to show stu-
ing on the viewer.
Studying the Fauves
Jennifer Nessom is an art teacher from
North Easton, Massachusetts.
dents that it is okay to feel different
We examined Fauvist portraits by
emotions, and that our faces reflect
Henri Matisse and Alexej Jawlensky.
different emotions.
Students learned
Students explore and understand pro-
Students looked at
that the Fauves used spective content for works of art. The Fauves used colors
their facial expres-
to express their own
colors to express
sions in mirrors and
their own feelings feelings and were not
noticed how the
shapes of their faces
changed as they
concerned with using
realistic colors.
and were not concerned with using
realistic colors. As
www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/
jawlensky_alexei.html
www.elffers.com
expressed different emotions. They
then drew at least four different
emotions while trying to look at the
actual shape of their faces.
I demonstrated painting with watercolors, I asked students to think
about the colors they would choose to
express emotion in their artwork.
