This project was really popular with students. As I've mentioned before, I'm teaching a class on graphic novels and comics. For this project, I reviewed how comic artists draw speech balloons differently to express the emotion of a piece of dialog or the personality of the speaker. We spent a short period of time talking about Pop Art and how artists like Roy Lichtenstein used images from comic books to create fine art paintings. Then I gave students a list of onomatopoeias and guided them through selecting art elements, lettering and compositions that would suit the word of their choice. Finally we created paintings and drawings of our speech balloons.
Here is an excellent Documentary on Lichtenstein. I thought it was too long to show in class but in another time and place it might be useful. It's a bit gimmicky but they interviewed a wide range of people and explained Lichtenstein's artwork in a way that was really accessible.
