Mona Lisa Parody

11/13/2016

Dabbing Mona Lisa

For this project, I was looking for a way to infuse more art history into my curriculum and also a chance to use liquid watercolor.

I already had a parody of the Mona Lisa 'dabbing' above the regular poster of the real painting and my students were pretty much obsessed with it.

When I found a few reference posts on pinterest, I decided to tackle a Mona Lisa parody project with my students.

I printed off this head and hands template from Art Projects for Kids.

Throughout the unit I shared facts from this list.

And since everyone loves a good whodunnit, I started the whole unit off with the mysterious story of the stolen Mona Lisa. Prior to the first class, I took down my Mona Lisa poster and left a small white sign that declared the missing/stolen Mona Lisa.

I did not hang up any pictures or images for inspiration, I started with a story of the missing painting. If you are looking for a good version, I read the one page story for the first few classes, but after that, I basically had it memorized. Here is another one you could copy and have your students read.

After learning how the painting was stolen and then recovered, I explained that it elevated the painting to THE most famous painting in the world. As a result, other artists started to make funny versions of the painting called parodies. I showed them a bunch of examples of parodies of the Mona Lisa.

Parody--an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.

Mona Lisa releasing butterflies

Flash sits below the sloth Mona Lisa parody painting

After explaining what a parody is, I realized that there are many instances that arise in cartoons or movies in which references are made to famous songs, works of art, etc.

Many times, students don't have the background knowledge to 'get' the joke. So I decided to enlighten them with a little game called: Parody or Real Thing. Some students recognized these images immediately because they had seen them in a previous class or I had showed them last year.

Other images, they had never seen before, so I quickly gave them a mini art history lesson about the painting, artist or time period. It was a way to get the info in really quickly. I used a slide show for my initial introduction of the game, and then had them say out loud, what they thought---Parody or Real Thing.

I showed them the Parody or Real Thing slide show after the initial introduction of the project. That same day, I introduced my Mona Lisa inspiration wall. I painted a big 6ft tall sloth in the Mona Lisa pose, with a Starry Night background---this gave students a lot of ideas on how they could incorporate other famous paintings as a background or they could reference other works of art in their parody to make it more interesting.

Later, I made a kahoot quiz to make the game more interactive with all new images.

I LOVE Kahoot---I had a few issues the two days I tried to implement the quiz. First of all, the internet was almost non-functioning. I wasted several class periods just trying to get everyone logged onto devices.

Second of all, it is SUPER interactive, when the game was functioning, most kids were so amped up from the excitement, it was hard to get a word in edgewise, which was why I was attempting to play this on our early-out day on Halloween. It perfectly aligned with our unit and the kids really enjoyed it.

For the actual design, we used 12X18 watercolor paper. Students could choose to use the actual photo copy of her face and hands, or they could attempt to draw her on their own. They could use just the face, or just the hands, but if they decided to do another character, then it either had to be in the famous 'Mona Lisa' pose or it had to have the same background, or else it wouldn't be a parody, it would just be a painting of Batman.

I really liked it when they realized they could customize her hair or they could cut out scraps of paper to make a partial mask or sunglasses. I told them to use the white paper around the photo copy for 'props' or practice sketches.

We used a glue stick to glue the cut-outs down, and we drew everything in pencil and outlined in sharpie first.

Supplies:
12X18 Watercolor paper
Pencil and eraser
sharpie
liquid watercolor
crayons
regular watercolor

I decided not to hang up very many of the scary clowns since several of my students are scared of them.

Obviously the election and scary clowns were on everyone's mind in September. Also featured frequently, pokemon go, snapchat filters, and superheroes.

Trump is dabbing. Lots more Trumps than Hillarys.

This girl can draw a horse any time, any where. She is amazing.

A deer + Leaning Tower. This kid isn't afraid to try to put stuff in his art that other kids say is 'hard'.

Some were confused by the fact that the copy I gave them was completely bald--they had to at least add hair. And maybe arms and a shirt. I only gave them the head/neck and hands. Some added the hair perfectly.

I had a sub one day, and when I returned, this table of girls had created an assortment of wild hair styles. This was my favorite.

Sloth Mona Lisa. Ties the unit to previous units this year.

I think the medusa Mona is from Oriental Trading company.

This girl has had a shark in every single project for the last two years. I kind of love it.

A little pop art---I had a 'spare parts' bin where students could rummage around for extra heads and hands.

How clever is this boy to do a #nailedit meme as his Mona Lisa parody. I just love it! He wrote 'When I Created The Mona Lisa #nailedit' in the background.

The liquid watercolor containers that were left in my classroom by a previous teacher worked out wonderfully for this project. They did not have brown or black so I opted for little plastic containers of brown and black, and I also provided regular watercolor sets for a jet black as the liquid watercolor was good for a dark sky, it wasn't good for Batman's suit---it just wasn't a dark dark black, it was sort of blueish.

I encouraged my students to draw the background, outline everything in sharpie and erase old pencil lines. Also, I TRIED to stress that they should color SMALL details, like the yellow windows on this building with CRAYON before painting---to make it a wax resist. Some did not listen and had the headache of painting all the tiny windows and then trying to paint around them once the yellow dried.

The first day of painting, I showed them a video I had made, where I demonstrate the wet-on-wet technique AND I explain how wax resist works. It was nice to have the demo recorded so I could show it to all 12 classes.

Playing tetherball. I just love this one so much!!

A foxy Mona Lisa

Throughout the project, I had a drawing center set up for students to study statues that I have of the leaning tower of Pisa and the Eiffel tower. For this drawing station, I encourage them to blind contour as much as they can and use only felt tip drawing pens so they can't erase. If they made something they were proud of, they could color it and glue it to a frame--names and class codes on the front---and I selected a bunch of them to hang up. Some made cute parodies of the Leaning Tower after I told them a little about it.