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Smiling Mona Lisa in a simple style, hands folded beside a window with a winding river and hills. An easy art printable for kids; get the free PDF.
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Download PDFPrintA simply drawn Mona Lisa with wavy hair, a veil and folded hands, beside a columned window with clouds, trees, a winding river and a castle.
Use soft browns and greens like Leonardo and add a light blue sky.
Copy the Mona Lisa's smile in a mirror and describe what feeling it shows.
The Mona Lisa is painted on a wooden panel made of poplar, not on canvas.
This smiling Mona Lisa is a friendly take on one of the most famous portraits ever painted. Leonardo da Vinci began it in Florence, Italy, around 1503 and kept adding touches for many years. Today it hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris, where millions of visitors line up to see it.
The smile is what everyone talks about. Some people think she looks happy, others think she looks sad or even a little sly, and her expression seems to shift depending on where you look. The secret is a technique called sfumato, an Italian word that means something like smoky or softened. Leonardo brushed on super thin layers of paint so the corners of the lips and eyes had no hard edges.
Because of those soft shadows, our brains cannot tell exactly where the smile ends. Look straight at her mouth and it seems serious. Look at her eyes and the smile seems to grow. That trick makes the portrait feel almost alive.
Leonardo was much more than a painter. He was also an inventor, engineer, musician and scientist who studied the muscles of the face and the way light falls on objects. The Mona Lisa's smile is what happens when art and science work together.
