Golden Portraits inspired by Gustav Klimt

The artist Gustav Klimt is best known for his part in creating an art style called Art Nouveau in the late 1800's. Art Nouveau is characterized by curving shapes and flat, decorative patterns. In Klimt's paintings of people, like the Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer at right, typically the face and hands are the only part that seem realistic. The rest of the paintings are composed of simplified figures, clothing filled with bright repeat patterns (often gold-colored in Klimt's earlier paintings), and elaborate, mosaic-like backgrounds.

Inspired by Klimt, sixth graders created their own "golden portraits" in art class. Students found a figure in a magazine and cut out only the exposed flesh of the head, hands and legs before gluing them to gold or silver scratch paper. Then, using a wooden stylus and special scratch knife, they filled the figures' clothing them with busy, swirling, decorative, repeat patterns. The background patterns are a different size to help the figure stand out and students focused on balancing scratched, metallic areas and areas left black. Finally, students used metallic paints to create even more pattern on their frame.