Collages Inspired By Romare Bearden

We took the kids to MoMa, NYC, at the weekend. The aim of the trip was to get some inspiration for our crafts and WOW did we get it!

Our picture was inspired by Romare Bearden's The Dove which was created in 1964. In Bearden's picture, he created a collage of faces and people with an urban background - click on the link to see the picture. His picture features faces and bodies made from lots of different people and was one of our favourite artworks we saw that day.

We took Bearden's idea and cut out lots of backgrounds and also people from a few magazines - this was a great activity to build scissor skills. First we made the background. We decided a mix of scenes would be good and so we tried to find as many landscapes as possible. We found desert, sea, rainforest and the moon (top right!). Also, rather randomly, we added a library. Since we had talked about how to add depth to a picture, we decided to put it in! We also tried to show different weather by adding dark squares at the top to represent rain clouds.

I cut out the faces from the magazines and the kids had to match two faces of similar sizes together and then cut them either horizontally or vertically. This was great fun! We decided where we would put them and stuck them to the landscape with glue sticks. Take a close look. I think the picture came out really well.

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