Self-Portraits Everywhere!

We're buried in self-portraits at school! I feel like SPs are an annual experiment, and I'm always trying to find new media and inspiration for these. I'm working on Lichtenstein self-portraits with 5th grade right now, and 4th graders are doing an identity project with their self-portraits. I'll post those at the end of the month when they're complete. I'm trying to muster up the strength to do a collage SP project with 3rd grade in April (just thinking about carting around all the materials is giving me a headache). And this year's K and 1st grade splatter self-portraits are here. 

For now, here are a few of this year's 2nd grade self-portraits. As I usually do with 2nd, we discussed van Gogh and viewed a few of his self-portraits. We also talked about impasto and his use of color in all of his work. As with last year's 2nd grade paintings, we used oil pastels and tempera cakes, but this time we just created background textures (impasto style) with lines and dots, sticking with one color scheme for the background: warm, cool, analogous, primary, secondary, or complementary. Last year's 1st and 2nd grade Expressionist self-portraits can be viewed here.

Warm/Cool Landscapes

(Photo note: Can't quite get the contrast
right, so the color's a little off.)

Second grade students recently completed warm and cool color landscapes in oil pastel on black construction paper. I've seen this project on several blogs, but I really like the tutorial on Kids and Glitter's blog. 

My students really loved this project, and it made them feel so successful. The basic premise is pretty simple: Students create a landscape drawing with very clearly separated sky and land elements (hills, mountains, etc.) Students place warm colors only in the sky and cool colors only in the land, or they can choose the reverse. (My students and I decided that when the cool colors are in the sky it looked like night time.)

In addition to the tips on Kids and Glitter, I gave my students a large (12x18) sheet of newsprint to put beneath their black paper. For some students, the ability to visualize the concentric circles in the sky is really difficult. They want to connect the lines at the edge of the paper and have difficulty imagining that each circle just keeps going as though the paper continued, as well. I helped students solve this problem by having them continue the circles on their newsprint (so they could see the complete circles), which really clarified this step for them. For many, once they used the newsprint to draw the complete circle a couple of times, they understood what was happening and were able to finish their drawing only on the construction paper.

The results are very dynamic (as long as students press firmly and don't leave a lot of black construction paper showing through the pastel). The other examples of this project that I've seen use black pastel to trace the lines in the drawing, but I gave students a choice. Most of them chose to leave the lines untraced for a softer look. Many also wanted to add snow caps to their mountains. Nice.

The Dot (K and 1st)

Because I'm very linear myself as an artist, it's tricky for me sometimes to break free of lines and take students on a more abstract journey. I'm trying though! This project inspired by Peter H. Reynolds' The Dot was quite a departure for me, and I loved it. The kids really enjoyed it, too, because there absolutely was NO wrong way to do this. (Not that there's ever a wrong way to make art, but kids are tough on themselves, even the little ones.) It was wonderful to be able to help them turn a "mistake" into a beautiful part of their art. (Don't like that red dot? Add yellow! Make it bigger! Outline it with purple! Endless possibilities!)

I read The Dot to  students, then gave them oil pastels and a piece of drawing paper and turned them loose. The only direction I gave them was to fill their paper with dots...big ones, small ones...dots everywhere! The next week we painted. Again, anything went, though I did keep an eye out for muddy colors. As I always do when I paint from the cart, I had a parent volunteer, so an extra pair of adult eyes watching out for over-saturated paper or too-thick paint was very very helpful.

This was an excellent experiment in color and pure abstraction, and I adore the results. Here are a few more of our dots!

Kandinsky Color Studies

3rd-5th grade artists just completed Kandinsky color studies. We watched a few YouTube videos of his work, and I was amazed at how captivated the students were. There are several, like this one, that simply show a slide show of his work with background music. They're quite calming. I was really amazed by one group of 3rd grade boys who had quite the deep conversation about the shapes, lines, and colors in Kandinsky's paintings, turning their heads to view the works from all angles. Students sketched and doodled in their sketchbooks while watching, making note of elements that they found interesting.

I think every art teacher does this project in some form, but I chose oil pastels and tempera paints for this year. We'd talked about color relationships, and students were given 5 required color schemes that had to be used in their paintings. The 6th square was a free choice square. Any color combo was allowed.

3rd grade colors: Primary, Secondary, Warm, Cool, Complementary (choose one pair), Choice
4th and 5th grade colors: Warm, Cool, Complementary (choose one pair), Analogous, Monochromatic (one color plus white or black)

I did this in four classes:

1. Color Theory Introduction: Students completed a tertiary color wheel using red, yellow, and blue colored pencils. (3rd graders just did primary and secondary colors.)

2. Color Relationships/Introduction to Kandinsky: Warm, Cool, Analogous, Monochromatic, Complementary

3. Pastel Drawings: We folded a 9x12 piece of manila drawing paper into 6 squares (fold once vertically, then fold into thirds). I walked through each color scheme with students as they applied pastels in circles of varying thickness, beginning with a dot. I encouraged students to apply the pastel heavily. I also had to keep reminding them to make some of their circles thick, otherwise I would have ended up with a bunch of skinny concentric circles and A LOT of "naked" paper.

4. Paint with Tempera: Because I'm mobile, I use tempera disks. (I bought the set with lids from School Specialty.) I'm not crazy about how chalky these feel after they dry, but they do serve their purpose well, and the colors are intense.

Cubist Hearts (Paul Klee)

I LOVE this lesson on Paul Klee from A Faithful Attempt! "Miss" has done an excellent job of laying out the background and process, so please visit her blog for the complete instructions. She has a number of additional excellent projects posted, as well.

Many of my 6th grade students said it was their favorite so far (we did it in early January), and the success rate was extremely high. This could easily be done with younger students, as well (3rd and up maybe?). It's an excellent introduction to Paul Klee, abstraction, and cubism.

I required my students to choose a color scheme for their composition: warm/cool, complementary, analogous, monocrhomatic, or triadic. A thin wash of tempera paint is applied over black colored pencil (for the lines) and construction paper crayons. The results are beautiful, and students got to experiment hands-on with the way color can change the mood of a composition. (Some layered a couple of tempera washes, going from blue to blue green or blue violet, etc., because their color combinations didn't turn out in reality the way students imagined they would. Great learning experience.)

I've done the project now with three of my four sixth grade classes. Here are a few finished pieces...

Even MORE Underwater Watercolors!

Kindergarten drew warm-colored fish (at least that was the plan) in crayon and then painted a cool-colored watercolor wash over their entire paper. Paper size is 6"x9". Great experience in watercolor techniques for these young artists!

Alex - Kindergarten

Samantha - Kindergarten

Tylah - Kindergarten

Yoandri - Kindergarten

Expressionist Self-Portraits (K-2)

Another K-2 color project this year is the following Expressionist self-portrait series. I had to rethink the self-portrait project for this age because of the time required to do the van Gogh-inspired self-portraits. This one takes only three class periods (as opposed to six).

For this project, K and 1st used crayons and tempera paint, and 2nd used oil pastels and tempera, all on manila drawing paper. The resist technique is basically the same as the watercolor resist underwater paintings we do, but tempera is thicker and more opaque than watercolor, so students have the opportunity to experiment with and compare both types of paint.

Art topics and elements discussed: Expressionism, color use in expressing emotion and mood, proportions of the human face

Brescia - Kindergarten

Samantha - Kindergarten ("Look, Ms. Renn! I'm a RAINBOW!")

Since I can't give first and last names, I prefer to tell you that this young artist's last name is Blue. :) - 1st grade

Chris - 1st grade

Emily - 1st grade

Kalani - 1st grade

Louie - 1st grade

Jozette - 2nd grade

Conrad - 2nd grade

(My classes are 45 minutes, and K-2 meets with me every day for 35 consecutive school days (rather than once a week for the entire year). I much prefer this schedule, as it allows for greater continuity in the classroom (kids don't forget from day to day, but they forget A LOT from week to week). This schedule also allows me to better control supplies.)

Piet Mondrian Collages (K-2)

Students are introduced to the work of Piet Mondrian as we discuss balance, shape, composition and primary colors. Students are given six 12" black strips of construction paper to arrange on white paper (9x12). Three must be horizontal and three must be vertical. I encourage them to vary the space between their strips/lines so that there is variety of size in the squares and rectangles that are created when the lines overlap. (So many students want to arrange their lines in a perfect grid. A number of them want to put the lines right on the edge of the paper, too, so watch out for that.)

Then students use only red, yellow and blue crayons to fill in only six of the shapes in an effort to create a balanced composition.

The examples below are from first grade.

Self-Portraits (1st and 2nd)

The following self-portrait images were created using tempera paint on white poster board.  This project can be found in How to Teach Art to Children. (I bought the book years ago when I first started teaching art in schools and needed someplace to begin! I still love these self-portraits. This project helps students understand that art is a process that can't always be whipped out in ten minutes - or even one class period - and young artists are always delighted with the results and glad they didn't rush it.)

After studying two or three of van Gogh's paintings and discussing his painting technique and use of color, students draw their self-portrait in pencil, paint it with tempera (a little white glue mixed in thickens the paint nicely), then outline the portrait in black marker to create the dark outlines. The background is prepared separately by cutting tissue paper and creating a collage of analogous colors on another piece of poster board (or any other combination of three colors: warm, cool, primaries, secondaries, monochromatic, complementary values, etc). The portrait is then cut out and glued on top of the background.

This technique is intended to loosely mimic van Gogh's use of bold colors, broad brush strokes (impasto), and bold contour lines in his paintings. Depending on how long a class period is, this project can take 5-7 days.

Materials:

• Two pieces of poster/tag board per student, cut to be the same size (I usually cut a standard size poster board in half, so one poster board per student will do it. However, for the portraits below I used donated tag board that was pre-cut to about 18"x18".)
• Pencils
• Tempera paint
• Brushes (large and small)
• Black markers
• Tissue paper in a variety of colors (I cut it into 1" strips and let them cut shorter lengths)
• Scissors (or students can tear the tissue paper instead)
• White school glue (Glue sticks work, as well, but I like to have students paint over the tissue paper once it's on the board so there's a nice flat finish and there are no loose ends flopping about.)

Schedule:

• Day 1: Show examples of van Gogh's work; discuss the artist, impasto, use of color, etc.
• Day 2: Discuss facial proportions, "bust"; Draw self-portrait in pencil on one piece of poster board
• Day 3: Paint self-portrait; be sure to allow paint to be thick...there should be raised texture, just as in van Gogh's paintings
• Day 4: Trace drawing with black marker (I tell students to trace anything was drawn in pencil.)
• Days 5 & 6: Create background collage with tissue paper (This may take 2 days because of the time it takes to let children choose their three colors - plus, we review the color wheel and talk about analogous colors. It also just takes time to get all of that paper glued down! I recommend having paper clips on hand, or sandwich bags, to keep loose tissue paper together for day 2 of gluing. I have the kids clip their tissue together and lay it on top of their background so we know whose is whose.)
• Day 7: Cut out self-portrait and glue to background; Trim any "hanging" tissue paper from edges of background (I encourage students not to place their self-portrait smack in the middle of the background...place it to one side or even let it fall off of one side and trim it!)

(I adapt this project for kindergarten by having them work much smaller (9"x12" at the largest) and having them color their portrait in crayon and outline in marker. For kinder artists, the project takes three days: 1 - Look at van Gogh's work/Draw self-portrait in pencil/Color with crayon; 2 - Create background collage; 3 - Trace self-portrait pencil lines in marker/Cut out and glue to background.)

Artist: Dyanna, 1st grade

Artist: John, 2nd grade

Artist: Kevin, 2nd grade

Artist: Lara, 2nd grade

Artist: Leandro, 2nd grade

Artist: Parker, 2nd grade

Artist: Stephanie, 2nd grade

Artist: Tyler, 2nd grade