Artist~Teacher... tishalou

Self Portraits

I have the third graders create a head and shoulders self portrait - the way they currently know how to. This way I can see what they already know and how cartoon-y or anime-y they draw people. I get a wide range of abilities like these:

  

1. create the oval
2. divide the oval in half vertically and horizontally
3. Measure on ourselves and on Vinny and Frida to determine that our eyes are in the middle of the oval
4. Discuss how the face is 5 eyes wide - we measure on ourselves
5. Put a football shape right in the middle of our oval - create two more footballs on equally on either side. We know that the eyes will be the 2nd and 4th football, erase the other 3.
6.  Divide the space from the chin to the middle in half, create a guideline. This is where our nose will rest.
7. Below the nose make a spread out M for the top lip - the width of the mouth should go to the middle of the eyes. Create the bottom lip.
8. Measure on ourselves how the top of the ear lines up with the eye and the bottom of the ear with the bottom of the nose. Create ears that go from the middle guideline to the bottom guideline.
9. Divide the top of the head to the middle in half - this is the hairline. Stress that hair does not just grow out of the top of our head - it grows all the way around and on our forehead.
10. We turn the paper over and do a close up of an eye with detail and then add the detailed eyes on the sketch.
11. After practicing once we more on to the final paper - go over lightly sketching in the guidelines and then students use mirrors to make it look like them.