Self-Portraits!

Students in PreK and Kinder created these super sweet and hilarious self-portraits. We began by tracing a head and neck shaped template onto a piece of paper. I gave students several colors of paint (brown, black, white, yellow and red) and showed them how to mix the colors to create a unique skin and hair tone that matched their own. During the next class when these were dry, we talked about the proportions of the face and drew out all of our features. I encouraged students to add details that are unique to them- such as blacking out teeth if they are missing or jewelry. We then painted a pattern background from the center to add emphasis to the face, cut everything out and put it all together. These portraits are so fun and really capture each students personality!

Beyond the Border

This beyond the border art project is meant to explore the design principles of emphasis and contrast. Students illustrate some type of animal or insect and some nature in the composition with a square in the middle. Everything in the middle square should be in bright color and everything outside the square should be in different values of black and white. The entire animal or insect should be in color to create the illusion that it is breaking out "beyond the border." Students should use the rule of thirds to create an interesting composition while also exploring different colored pencil techniques.

Lichtenstein Style Self-Portraits

Students in grades 4-6 learned about American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and created these dynamic self-portraits in a similar style. We began by drawing self-portraits in pencil as realistically as possible. Students then outlined the portrait in sharpie and added an action word and some lines or shapes around the word for emphasis. Next, students drew in several shapes and painted them in with the primary colors. We used primary colors and benday dots to stay in theme with the old school vintage style of early comic strips. This is a great project to teach about pop art while incorporating some elements that can capture the artist's personality.

Glitter Fish

Students in grades 1-3 created these fun artworks to learn about seascapes. During the first class, we looked at The Goldfish by Paul Klee. We discussed the use of lines and symbols in his seascape and also how he shows EMPHASIS and MOVEMENT. Students then used cool color crayons to create their oceans- using symbols and lines to show the movement they see in the water. The next class we read the book Pattern Fish and compared the many different patterns in the book. Students looked at pictures of many different types of fish and then drew their own using lines and patterns. We painted the fish with warm colors to create a contrast with the cool colored seascapes and help with emphasizing the fish and making them stand out. The final touch was finger stamping some small fish into the background and adding a little glitter to help the fish stand out. This is a highly effective lesson to teach about warm/cool colors, emphasis, movement and patterns!