Self Portraits

Self Portraits with The Important Book

When I started thinking about my goals as an art teacher for this project I wanted to make it fun, but to also give the kids the basic skills to learn how to construct a face with the proper proportions. In the past the kids have always just given me a loud grown when I have even mentioned self portraits and the dreaded “I Can’t” comes out. I think humor is a great way to start off a lesson that might seem a little daunting so I made a large drawing on the board of an example of a bad self portrait. I had found this idea from another art teacher, but at the moment I cannot find the example. I will post later when I locate it. We made a game out of finding all of the things that Mr. Bennis had done wrong when he made his drawing. Examples like his ears were level with his mouth, eyes were in the middle of his forehead and his nose was a triangle.

We then learned how the ears line up with your eyes and how the face is divided up into different sections. Since this concept is somewhat developmental I just let my 2nd and 3rd graders create the face that they wanted, and the outcome was great. The 4th graders were really encouraged to be care carful about the placement of their facial features, and I thought they did a great job as well. The 5th and 6th graders used the grid method to construct their portraits, and they developed a greater awareness about drawing their faces in proper proportions. I put these grid self portraits on a separate page, but they are really just a subset of this unit.

The Important Book also proved to be a big motivator for this assignment. I read the book to them and then we used it to do a writing activity. Every student had an important poem written about them by their peers. One student would go out in the hall while the class would brainstorm about reasons that this student was important. We then put them into a poem in the same pattern that The Important Book had used. I have included below examples of some of the 2nd and 3rd grade poems.

Ethan

The important thing about Ethan is that he is good at sports.
He is kind, very smart and can be very helpful.
He is funny, can run fast and is good at math.
He is nice, Jewish and a good artist.
But the important thing about Ethan is that he is good at sports.

Lucas

The important thing about Lucas is that he is a great artist.
He likes to draw monsters and he is funny.
He likes to talk a lot and has trouble being still.
He is funny and a great friend.
He can run very fast and loves PE.
But the important thing about Lucas is that he is a great artist.

The motivating catch was that all of the self portraits had to be completed before I would let them see their important poems. They really wanted to see what their friends had written about them so they stayed focused until their portraits were done. The class as a whole also wrote an important poem about their teacher and then at our spring art show we hung all of the portraits by classes with their teacher’s poem in the middle. This project was a lot of work, but It was worth it because it made the kids so happy.