Yayoi Kusama Dotted Pumpkins for Kids

I love the results of this dotted pumpkin project inspired by the dotted pumpkins of Yayoi Kusama. I did this art lesson with 3rd/4th grade. (Amazon Affiliate links have been used, at no extra cost to you.)

I based our project after the lesson taught on the blog Plastiquem. First, I read the book Yayoi Kusama, From Here to Infinity, which is an inspirational book about her artwork and life. This is on my list of top 10 favorite books about artists. Well, I don’t actually have a list yet, but if I did, this would be on it. (Note to self: future blog post.) I wrote a review of this book in a previous blog post, which you can read here.

To make the pumpkin pictures, students looked at pumpkins while drawing them on construction paper. The students outlined the pumpkins and their lines with black Sharpies. Then the pumpkins were cut out. The next step was to use tempera paint and Q-tips to make dots on the pumpkins. When the dots were dry, the pumpkins were glued to a solid background paper. Finally, patterns were added with metallic markers.