This Mona Lisa painting project is one I have done several times and it really helps my Montana students relate to Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting. It is also a good mixed media project. You could change it up by relating it to your state or area.

How To:

1. First I have the students paint about a 2 1/2″ border on their cardboard with the brown paint using a large brush and then using a small round brush paint in some lines and knot holes.
2. While that is drying they work on coloring in the Mona Lisa (lightly) with the colored pencils. They can choose the hair and eye colors and her blouse color.
3. Then using pattern pieces that I made in advance using poster board scraps they trace out a hat, cloak (from the scrapbook paper) and rectangular background piece (from the magazines). I used a map of Montana in my sample, but any large picture without a bunch of writing would work. (for example: a scenery picture, a herd of cows, a man on a horseback, close-up of a saddle or cowboy boots,etc.)
4. Then they cut and assemble all the pieces.
5. Next they find letters or words (mine came from the magazines or scrapbook papers) for the “Montana”, and letters (the ones in the sample came from a bag of random letters I got from Michaels) to spell out “Mona”, and lay them out on the frame.
6. Now they are ready to Mod Podge all the pieces onto the framed board, being careful to center everything.
7. Once they are done getting all the papers glued down, they do a final coat of Mod Podge over the whole piece.

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions and please refer people back to this site if you use this lesson! 🙂