"Selfie" Portraits

Back in October we had Red Ribbon Week. This is a week where the guidance counselor talks to the students about the dangers of using drugs. I support this endeavor by having my kindergarten, 1st and 2nd graders make posters. Red Ribbon Week is celebrated nationwide and there are catalogs in which ribbons can be purchased for students to wear. Choices can be made as to what slogan to put on the ribbons. Our guidance counselor chose "I ❤️ My Drug Free Selfie."

This was perfect as my curriculum has a unit on self portraits. With k & 1st I read the story below. We talked about and practiced different faces we might make according to our mood or how we were feeling at that moment. I briefly talked about how bad drugs were, leaving most of that lesson for the guidance counselor to do.  We talked about "selfies" and I demonstrated what they were by using my cell phone.

 I thought having students do their self portrait inside a cell phone frame would work out really well. When I get these "brilliant" ideas I usually Google free coloring pages and the item. That is how I got the cell phone frame. Then I photocopied it onto card stock. Students made their "selfies" and cut them out for display. Click here for details on how I teach self portraits.

 

 

With my 2nd graders I wanted them to have more of a challenge. In addition to self portraits the curriculum includes communication with the community. My interpretation is for students to make posters.  I also wanted them to learn about making bubble letters. 

Below are rubrics for making a poster.

  

Also some examples of the right and wrong way to make a poster.

 

 

When I teach bubble letters I start out by lightly drawing the letters for the word and leaving some space between each letter. I call this the bones of the letter. Next we need to put some skin or  a bubble over the letter and then erase the bones. Since we don't see our bones through our skin.

Again I had the students use a cell phone frame, it was smaller, leaving room for the slogan.

 

 

They were displayed on one of MY NEW Screenplex display boards.

Students were excited to see their work hanging up in the main hallway. 

What are some of the slogans you have used for Red Ribbon Week?

Thanks for reading!

Contemporary Self Portraits

 I made the decision almost a year ago when I started this blog that I would be very upbeat and positive. However, not every lesson I do as an art teacher is successful. Below is the sample that I started, which I did because my students didn't understand what I expected from them.  I told them my hand is important to me as an artist and that is why it is in the middle of the paper. And that they should think about what is the most important part of them to have in their art work.

 

My idea was totally inspired by the self portrait below when I was at Penn State for a Summer Institute on Contemporary Art.

 

 When school started back up last month I thought this would be a very different and exciting way to do self portraits with my 3rd-5th graders. We talked about the difference between a portrait and a self portrait. I showed students an enlarged photo of my inspiration. Looking closely you can see a lot of little vignettes that tell a story. My "I can" statement was "I can tell a story about myself using images".

We talked about the clues hidden in a self portrait or a portrait that might give us insight into that person. I had them write a list of their favorite things. Students practiced doing facial features and hands in their sketchbooks. The instructions sheets below can be found in Triarco.

They practiced doing 3D or joined figures, to get away from doing stick figures. This way they could include people in their story.

   

They practiced drawing out their stories in their sketchbooks.

 

 

Then they had the choice to color with markers, colored pencils or paint.

 

Shown are the the self portraits of the students that understood the lesson and were successful. Too many of the students copied me and just drew a hand in the middle of their paper. Some students heard the word paint and started over and just painted something not even closely related to the assignment. AND many still drew stick figures! Many students thought they were finished because they did the artwork in their sketchbooks, not realizing that, that is where you plan out your work. Obviously my communication to them was severely lacking!

While there were successful self portraits throughout all 3 grade levels, the percentage wasn't high enough for me to consider this lesson a success. In reflecting back maybe I should have limited it to one image that would tell us something about them. Or had samples of different ways to approach this. If I do this again I will have photos of student work to share. Perhaps both the ones that worked and the ones that didn't. I am also seriously considering having students do an artist statement to reflect on the assignment and what they learned from it.

I would be very interested in hearing about the lessons that you didn't think worked.

Thanks for reading!!

Primarily Art with Mrs. Depp: 2 D and 3 D Self Portraits

Primarily Art with Mrs. Depp: 2 D and 3 D Self Portraits:  I'm pretty sure all of us art teachers have had our students doing a self portrait at some point in elementary school. I actually rea...

2 D and 3 D Self Portraits

 I'm pretty sure all of us art teachers have had our students doing a self portrait at some point in elementary school. I actually read of one teacher who has her students do one every year. I think that is a great idea! As it turns out, these self portraits are from 2011/12 and were part of the first exhibit I had displayed at The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art.

Had students do some really cute ones last year with parrots on their shoulders for the pirate thing we have going on at school-but didn't take any photos........next time.

   

 

The wonderful portraits above were made by my kindergarten through to 3rd grade students. I had 2 different oval tracers for them to use. We discussed how much of ourselves should be in the portrait. Just the head, head and torso, what else could we include as part of the portrait. Are we standing in front of examples of our art? Are we outside? A favorite place?

The lesson always starts out with talking about the shape of our head. Then, how our EYES are half way between the top of our head and our chin.  Our NOSE is half way between our eyes and our chin AND our MOUTH is half way between our nose and our chin. EARS are located on the side of our head between our eyes and our nose. I touch my face as I explain this and encourage them to locate all of this on their faces. And NO EYES on our foreheads........ please!

 

I had the students paint their portraits and I really loved how they came out.

My 4th and 5th graders did 3 D portraits. I had found out about this project at one of my district planning days where we do a meet and share.

 

Very simple: use a 12"x18" piece of construction paper folded into thirds for the head. Demonstrate different ways for the students to manipulate the paper- tearing, curling, fringing, folding for the details AND before you know it you have these really cool 3 D portraits!

 It is really fun when you have "Crazy Hat Day" during the week you teach this!!

Yes, I really have a flamingo hat!

As I mentioned, last week was hectic! I now have a new grand daughter, that I had the opportunity to see as she was being born. A big THANK YOU to my son-in-law for giving me this incredible memory.

Thanks for reading! I would love to know about the self portraits you do with your students!!