Painted Digital Portraits

Here's a fun, easy, summer art project you can do at home with children of all ages. Start by taking a digital photographic portrait and print it out in black and white, or enlarge on a photo copier a portait on 8 x 10 paper. You child's school picture might be just perfect to use for this project!

Use acrylic or tempera paint or keep it simple with colored pencil. Inexpensive acrylic paint is available in small bottles at your local craft store. Be sure to have a variety of brush sizes on hand for large areas and detail work. Choose a palette of complementary colors such as green and red, blue and orange or yellow and purple to create visual contrast. Vary the brush strokes from smooth to bumpy, or impasto, type styles to increase visual interest.

Use the photograph as a guide to begin painting or 'coloring in' a self-portrait. Interesting effects can be obtained by leaving some areas such as the eyes or mouth unpainted so that the photographic information shows through. Reassure your artists at home that the final portrait does not need to be 'realistic.' That's the fun of painting!

A Frame of Reference

To display a digital photographic self-portrait as an end-of-year project students created these simple autobiographical frames with white colored pencil on black construction paper.
I came up with this extension to the self-portrait project as a kind of "down-time" activity to manage the many classroom interruptions we faced the last two weeks as different groups of students left intermittently for end-of-the year events, making direct teaching a challenge! I worried they might find it somewhat tedious.
So, I was quite surprised that students begged to work on this project even when we all were there. I think they enjoyed both the relaxing pace of the activity as well as the challenge of illustrating the 8 'loose' categories I gave them. These included: 1 name, 2 wishes, hopes or dreams, three characteristics about yourself, four places you'd like to visit, five important relationships, six activities you enjoy , seven foods you like to eat, and eight favorite books, movies, songs, bands, and/or plays or musicals. I was also surprised at how much discussion the activity fostered as students shared and compared their interests.
I suppose self-portrait activities in art classes as well as autobiography, memoir projects and journaling in language arts classes are so popular for this age group because, as many teachers know, middle school students are most comfortable with what they think they know best: themselves and their peers. I hope these autobiography projects help them gain self-understanding while also questioning assumptions about others.
For this project I pushed the desks together into large seating groups for 8, so that different social groups had to mix a bit. It was heartwarming to see kids from different groups comment positively on each others' interests and abilities. As a frame of reference understanding one's own skills and interests can help students value the interest and skills of others.

Fantastic Forest

Just two days of class left, then a week of half day exam days, then summer. I will be sad, as I am each year, to say goodbye to students I've worked with for two years. I meet them as awkward 12 year olds, just kids, really, and two short years later, say goodbye to (mostly) confident young adults. An amazing, fascinating metamorphosis.
This morning I asked a group of 8th graders which projects they most enjoyed over the course of the two years. Their answers surprised me. Different students, of course, gave different answers. After all, some love the mucky mess of clay, some don't. Some love to draw, others find it stressful.
However, one project the group agreed was a favorite was a large, acrylic landscape painting they did after studying the work of Henri Rousseau. I was surprised that this was a favorite as it was quite a lot of work. I pushed the students to go beyond a 'coloring in' approach, to experiment with brush strokes and color mixing. And some grumbled at the requirements which included a sleeping figure ala Rousseau's "Gypsy" as well as a collaged magazine critter or two and a strange juxtaposition of objects such as Rousseau's monkey with a back scratcher.

But, in the end, "freedom is moving easy in harness." As my students explained to me this morning, it was a challenging project and sometimes frustrating, but when they were done they thought, "Wow, I didn't know I could do that!" I guess that's what I love about teaching Middle School, watching this transformation take place both because of and in spite of, the strictures and structures of school.
It's corney, I know, but each summer I get to set a new crop of butterflies free. What a job!