Easy Klimt Art Lesson: Having Fun with Patterns

Here’s an easy Klimt art lesson that asks students to add their own background to one of his more famous paintings. A few similar projects are also linked below.

Here’s an easy way to bring a Klimt art lesson to any classroom or home. It only requires a color print of a template, and a few black markers, and a love of drawing patterns.

Gustav Klimt was born in 1862 to a poor, Austrian gold engraver. He began his career paintings murals and ceilings in buildings.

Much of his early work was rather realistic in nature. Later in life though, he began to paint in a more innovative and imaginative way. His work eventually became very decorative and symbolic, which meant that many of his images had hidden meaning. Klimt would continue to develop his style of ornamentation throughout his life and it would become increasingly organic looking, in the Art Nouveau style. 

Now students can use part of one of Klimt’s most famous paintings “Adele Bloch-Bauer”, and experiment with adding their own patterns. Her face and hands have been saved, and the background erased so she is surrounded by an empty sheet paper.

The downloadable lesson includes directions that recommended drawing a basic shape of a woman, and then filling in those areas with as many different detailed patterns as students can think up. Not adding color of any sort, will give students time to make as many as possible, and create the most contrast.

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