Studio Art: Grid Portraits

I promise I haven't left you!  I've just been doing a little soul searching, if you want to call it that.  In other words, I have been feeling like I'm in a rut and I'm not happy with the way I'm teaching, particularly in my elementary grade levels.  So, with that being said, my next few posts are going to be about my adventures in TAB!!  Yep, that's right.  I'm working on transitioning a few elementary classes into choice based learning.

At the high school level, I feel as if the choice based learning comes a bit more naturally, though I still feel as if I need to loosen the reigns a bit.  So, as I share some of our high school projects that we have completed this year so far, you'll hopefully notice me loosening up on requirements.  

But, enough of that for now.  These oil pastel self-portrait projects were completed by my Studio Art students (9th-12 graders), and it was something that really pushed the boundaries for them.  We looked at artwork by various portrait artists, including VanGogh, Frida Kahlo, Kehinde Wiley, and Chuck Close, discussing how each artist used the self-portrait for a different reason.  Using the grid method, I had students draw a "selfie" they had taken of themselves onto 16"x 20" paper.

Initially, I left the choice of material open ended for students, as long as they used color.  I decided to use oil pastels to do my self portrait, something I've never done with oil pastels before.  Many of the students decided to follow suite, seeing how I was challenging myself to do something new.  I have to say I'm extremely happy with how these turned out!

The 10 Looks of Mrs. Impey: "I left my sketchbook in my locker...can I go get it?"

Done by our two exchange students...fabulous work for two ladies who haven't hard art classes in years!

These students used colored pencils, or a combination of colored pencils and oil pastels.

I also used these drawing projects as my interim assessment for DDI.  I don't know if any of you have to do Data Driven Instruction, but my fellow art teachers and I have been getting creative with how we give our assessments.  Instead of doing tests or quizzes, like we had to do last year, we are making the artwork the assessment.  Since we have been stressing observational drawing, this fit in perfectly as it fell in line with my curriculum but it also worked for our DDI rubric for the 2nd quarter.  Less work for me and less work for my students!

2nd Grade: Fairy Tale Self-Portraits

And here's the second self-portrait project for the year!  The first Common Core listening and learning strand in 2nd grade is Fairy Tales and Tall Tales.  Last year, we created a collage of Beast's Castle from Beauty and the Beast.  This year I decided to take the self-portrait approach and have students paint themselves as kings, queens, princes, and princesses from a fairy tale.

This project took a total of three days.  On the first day, students used a mirror to draw their portrait in pencil.  On the first day and second day, they used a skinny brush to paint their outlines with black paint.  The second and third day was devoted to painting their portraits.  I told students to paint their backgrounds a single color, for the sake of time, but you'll notice that a few students had enough time to get a little more creative with their backgrounds.  :)  This project proved to be a great one for teaching students how to make smart choices with the type of paint brush they pick for a painting.

Kindergarten: Rainy Day Self-Portraits

Well, it's a dreary day of rain in Northern New York today, accompanied by Day 2 of DDI Camp.  That's Data Driven Instruction for those of you who may have not been forced to use it yet!  The concept behind it is understandable, but try to get two art teachers from different schools to meet for the first time and to agree on content to cover in their classes by the 10 week, 20 week and 30 week mark?  Ha, yeah right!

So, since it's a rainy day today, I'll leave you with my kinder's last project of the school year.  In alignment with their NYS Listening & Learning strand of "Seasons and Weather", we did these spring time portraits.  We discussed what the weather is like in spring (lots of rain!), what happens with the trees and flowers (they start to get leaves and bud!), and what a self-portrait is.

I took a different route with the kinder's for this project when demonstrating how to draw their body.  Usually, like with my pattern cow project, I would demonstrate one step at a time and have the kids do the step on their own paper before moving to the next.  This time, I demonstrated how to draw the umbrella and then had them do the umbrella.  Next, I showed them how to draw their entire body, starting with their head, the neck, their shoulders and arms, torso, legs and feet.  Then, I let them go to town!

We put in a horizon line (always important and something I stress!) and added good details for spring time.  This all happened in one class period.  The only thing I didn't allow them to do was color the sky, which is usually against the rules!

On the second day of the project, I gave each student a straw and we went over proper straw etiquette (no spitting at others, if you drop it on the floor get a new one, etc.).  I had the students turn their papers upside down and I then went around to the best "Mona Lisas" and gave them a few drops of blue ink on their paper.  Students blew through the straw to make the ink run and look like rain!  Once they were done with the blue, they received a few drops of turquoise, rinse, repeat and done!

Product Review: Roylco Moving Eyes Portraits

All righty, let's get some blog articles written here!  Now that we are done to the last four full days, two half days, and one 1/4 day of school (I'm not counting or anything...), I finally have more free time on my hands now that my high school students are all taking their NYS Regents exams instead of being in class.

Back in February, a Roylco representative contacted me and asked if I would like to try out a product for free in return for a review of it on my blog.  Of course, I said yes!  Who doesn't like to get free products?  I decided to try their Remarkable Art: Moving Eye Portraits.  Unfortunately, I was unable to incorporate these into any regular classes this year, however I did try them out with some Extended Day kids as an after school project.  These students were mostly 4th and 5th grade, all girls.

The first thing I did was pull out the assortment of faces that come with the kit, and laid them out for the students to pick from.

Next, the students colored the eye balls their color, and we folded them and taped them to the back of the portrait as the directions told us to.

I pulled out all sorts of things for the girls to use.  Scrap paper, gems, pipe cleaners, buttons, etc. etc.

These are their finished products from the project.  The girls that participated did have fun and took a couple extras home.  They wanted to make portraits of their siblings!

So, here is my review.  I'll give you the positives, the negatives, and how I will use the rest of the product I have left next year.

Positives

There is an assortment of faces, both shape-wise and skin color-wise.

On each portrait, the cardboard has lines scored where the nose and mouth should go.  It's good having the face laid out like that for younger students, especially when you're trying to teach them proportions.  This might be a good introduction to self-portraits with younger students...something to get them to see where the nose goes compared to the ears before they try and draw their portrait themselves.

The eyes look cool!  I'm not exactly sure that they looked like they were following us, but having them recessed back a little in the eye sockets makes them look more interesting than drawn on the same surface.  

This kit gives your students the ability to be extremely creative with what they use to create hair and such.  My girls were a little more set on getting them done than really thinking about how they could have been more creative.  Though, I think if you were to incorporate this in class as an actually project, you can do a little more leading up to it to encourage the use of mixed media.

Negatives

The face shapes and colors are limiting.  Even though i was only working with about eight different girls when we tried these out, they were complaining that they couldn't find a head that really looked like theirs.  I almost feel that this project would be a little more beneficial to older students if the faces weren't colored in.  Bring it down to the very bare minimum.

The directions for the eyes are a little unclear.  The way the edges of the eye piece fold they would stick out from the frame if you placed the eyes in such a way as to leave a little gap between the top surface and the eye piece.  I think that's how it has to be put together in order to make it seem like they are "following you", but the folds don't quite match up right to do it properly...at least not without some cutting.

This is definitely something that is meant for younger students.  The age on the package says for 5+ yet the girl on the package looks like she is a 3rd grader.  I don't like to give my older students something that is already "half-done" for them to complete, at least in class.  (After school crafts are a different area where I will sometimes make considerations.) 

Next year, I plan on trying out the leftovers I have with my 1st grade students during a portrait unit.  In the past, I've done Roy G. Biv collages, so i think this might be a cool thing to incorporate with that project, just to see what they do with it.  

You can purchase these kits from eNasco for $18.30 a box, which has 32 portraits total, or directly from their website for $19.99.  For an extra curricular program, craft club or even a regular classroom teacher, this is something I could imagine them purchasing (especially if they aren't confident in the area of arts and crafts!), however I feel like this is not something art teachers would or should spend their budgets on.

If I were ever to do something like this with older students in class, they would not be using this kit.  Instead, they would make their own from scratch.  In all honesty, that's how I tend to use some Roylco products.  For example, my 6th graders designed stamps this year (post coming soon!) for countries they were researching in Social Studies.  Roylco has a stamp kit that you can buy.  I bought one a few years back and instead of having the students draw on the stamps (which is how they are meant to be used), I simply have them use the originals as a pattern to trace their stamp.  That way, they can alter the edging if they choose to.

YAM: 3rd Grade Picasso

Third grade teachers really jumped on board for my YAM activities.  They created a two week unit in their classroom about art!  Last week, they spent time studying different styles and mediums of art.  This week they're talking about Picasso!  They made some really awesome packets for students to use in the classroom and they've really impressed me!  So, my connecting Picasso project is to make slab Picasso faces! (Pinterest influence found here.)

Here are my two examples that I made during my demonstrations.

One third grade teacher asked if they could come down and do the clay Picasso project with the students (during their free period..gasp! ;) )

Last week I started this mini Picasso unit off by having the students draw a quick, 20 minute self-portrait using oil pastels.  I had them cut them up and glue them down all "wonky" onto black construction paper.  I didn't really give them much information to go off of...this was a sort of "filler" project I did while I had no voice and had a substitute.

My example is on the left here...

Because they are covering Picasso so in depth in the classroom, I'm not really doing a full unit on Picasso.  I also cheated a little bit.  I'm not making the students roll out their own slabs for this.  I recently bought this really nice mini slab roller.  I've used it during the after school program because it's quicker, but I haven't used it in class before.

I argued with myself quite a bit as to whether or not to use it, but I decided to use it only because I wanted to give the students two days with the wet clay.  I've been waiting to have a full kiln to fire (for the rest of the Egyptian artifacts).  Both classes will be finished with these by Friday, so that means they will be dry enough to fire by Monday...  I ended up rolling out 5 slabs for each class.  It was enough for everyone to cut out what they needed to start.  I kept all of the extra rolled out slabs stacked in between canvas so we can use it next time instead of wasting it.

I pulled out the texture rollers so that they could give their faces some interesting texture.  We also poked some holes so that we can later add some pipe cleaner curls for hair.  I concentrated on making sure the students knew how to score and slip really well, especially since they didn't roll out their own slabs.

The first step we took was to cut out an interesting, organic shape for the head.  Then, we made a long snake coil and made a profile line of a face down the center, like Picasso usually has in his artwork.  Then I asked them to start cutting out different shapes to make the eyes, nose, mouth, etc.

4th Grade Lichtenstein Pop Art Portraits

Here are some of my 4th grade's finished pop art portraits!  (You can see some of the students holding their likeness here...)  I'm pretty happy with these.  For the most part, students took to the Ben-Day dots pretty well.  Only a few of the typical ones rushed through this or drew it out to be longer than it should have been.  I believe these took one of my classes 2 1/2 class periods to finish, and the other 3 class periods to finish. 

Before the February break, we started staff portraits.  Every student had to choose a teacher/faculty member to draw.  First, we are doing black and white drawings of half their faces (taking a photo, cutting it in half and gluing it to drawing paper) so that students can practice the drawing before we do the final copies.  When students draw the final portrait of their faculty member, they will have to do the entire face and they will get to choose if they want to do a purely black and white value drawing or a colored pencil value drawing.