Click the picture, drag it to your desktop and print it out. Color it in, blending your colors together the way Ms. Moschell demonstrated.

Will you use the same colors Munch did, or different ones? How do the colors change the feelings in the artwork?

Edvard Munch (pronounced MOONK) painted several versions of The Scream in 1893. Munch was an Expressionist, an artist who expresses strong feelings through colors and bold brush-strokes in his paintings. He was not trying to paint a realistic scene, even though it shows a real place near Oslo, Norway. At the time, people were shocked and upset by this painting. No one had ever painted this way before! That's why it is a famous painting -- it was very different from any other paintings that had ever been painted before. Now it's common for artists to use bold colors to show emotion.

Although most people think that the ghostly figure in the painting is screaming, Munch's diary tells a much different story:

"I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy (this means he felt a little sad). Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stopped and I leaned against the railing, dead tired. I looked at the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the fjord (narrow sea) and the city. My friends walked on. I stood there, trembling with fright, and I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature."

The figure in the painting is so sad, upset, and stressed out that he feels that nature is screaming out loud. He can't stand it any more so he holds his hands over his ears. But (according to Munch) he's not screaming!

This painting has been made into inflatable dolls, mugs, T-shirts, greeting cards and other humorous items because people today can really relate to how the painting seems to feel. The boy in the Home Alone movie makes fun of this painting when he slaps on after shave lotion and it hurts. It's funny, but it's even funnier when you know that he is trying to imitate this famous painting.

One way to define a masterpiece is that people still like to look at it many, many years after it was painted. The Scream is a masterpiece of modern art because over 100 years after it was painted, it still expresses feelings that people understand. The figure in the painting is an icon, or an important symbol for the anxiety and stress of modern life.