A creative twist on traditional master studies boosts student engagement while encouraging originality.

Rama Hughes

I knew the value of master studies, but I became overwhelmed by students’ complaints about it. In our end-of-year reflections, students ranked master studies among their least favorite art projects. Now and then, a student acknowledged the value and beamed when an especially strong likeness was achieved, but “copying” could not compete with the more creative, more personal, and more surprising assignments that students truly enjoyed. I took the feedback to heart… eventually. After receiving the same message year after year, I removed master studies from my curriculum.

During a comic book unit, my fourth graders had a blast drawing their own versions of masterful comic-book covers. There is a history of comic book artists recreating book covers in their own styles or with different characters. We used the exercise to study proportion and composition. It opened up conversations about color, emphasis, and storytelling too. The encouragement to alter the artwork placed this assignment among the favorites of the year. “Huh,” I thought, “maybe this is how to reintroduce master studies.”

To begin the first lesson of the new school year, I showed my fifth graders how artists from Botero to Basquiat created their own versions of the Mona Lisa. We all had a good laugh at Dan Piraro’s take on American Gothic. Most importantly, we discussed how Kehinde Wiley reimagines iconic works of art for his own purposes. I told students that this would be their objective for the project: Adapt a master painting to communicate your own mood, feeling, theme, or idea.

We reviewed drawing from observation. I showed students how to sketch or use the grid method to match proportions and recreate compositions. Students were given access to all of our 2D art materials, making the selection of appropriate materials an important decision as well. I showed examples of a master study that was unrecognizable and therefore not ready yet; a master study that was more detailed and closer to the original, but still not recognizable; a successful replica of the Mona Lisa painted by a skilled third grader; and a Mona Lisa painted as a green-skinned alien. That ridiculous rubric set my students loose.

Choosing the master works was fun. Few fifth graders had favorite works of art in mind. Most picked from a broad selection that my co-teacher and I provided. Students traded the printouts like baseball cards. It was a great way for me to get to know my new students; from our first conversations, we were discussing their preferences, their interests, and their imaginations.

Humor unlocked the project for our more reluctant students. Yes, you can add big toothy smiles to the fruit in that still-life. Yes, you can place Chewbacca in that David Hockney composition. Yes, you can put headphones on that flamingo.

I scheduled three weeks for the project, but students were so engaged that I gave it an extra two. After all, genius can’t be rushed!

Many students were surprised by what they accomplished, and their pride in their work was evident. They borrowed the skills of master artists to create works of art that were undeniably original. I also noticed that students identified more closely with the artists whose work they had studied. Throughout the year, they reported finding their artist’s work in books, museums, and TV shows.

As the cherry on top, two of our students’ master studies won the California Youth Art Month awards. Magritte’s famous apple was replaced by a fifth grader’s floating basketball, and the cat in Lucian Freud’s Girl with a Kitten was saved by popsicle with sprinkles.

Rama Hughes is an art teacher at the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, California, founder of the Art School of the Future, and a contributing editor for SchoolArts. rama@ramahughes.com; artschoolofthefuture.com

Covering the Masters: Reimagining Iconic Works