Each student really enjoyed the breathing exercises before we introduced the lesson for the day. Each student had a smile on their face as they all participated and we believe it got them into the art making mindset! As we talked about what self portraits are and showed them examples, many students were able to point out what they noticed they all entailed. For example, one student mentioned some look realistic and some look abstract. This propelled the excitement to make their portraits look like whatever they wanted and to explore interesting abstract ideas. Students were heard saying, "I'm going to make my eyes red!", "I'm going to make my hair green!" and heard laughing as they exuded excitement. One question we asked the class was, "What are elements you like about yourself that you want to incorporate?". This helped students see features in themselves that they liked and that they were ready to draw. We started by sketching what features they wanted to incorporate. Some students were excited to draw their glasses and incorporate their big smiles, other students started by sketching their head shape and practicing different shapes and techniques for different body parts. "Those eyes look practiced, Do you draw eyes often?" "Yes! I use to in my sketchbook." "I noticed you're making sketch marks, thats an important quality in drawing!" "What do you need to add to the face? What do you see with? What do you smell with? What do you eat with?" "I need to add a shirt, I have to be wearing something?" "How would you do strawberry blonde hair?" "I don't know! Lets take a look at what colors we can mix to make that." "Should I add salt? Yeah I think that would be cool!" Students were very excited to use the salt in the watercolors. After they thought they were done with the painting, they noticed something they could add like the color of their shirt or something in the background that represents a hobby they enjoy. Some students noticed the effect the salt was making in the paint, while others thought it was messy and gross. As we hung up the artwork at the end of class, the students felt like true artists at their own exhibition.
"What other techniques did you use?" Some students used their fingers to blend the pastels, some students used the paint brush to move the salt around, some students used different color pastels to mix and get the shade they desired. "What challenges or struggles did you overcome?" Challenges the students said they overcame were figuring out how to draw features that were unique to them. They mentioned they had to take off their glasses to study them since they were unique from everyone else's glasses. They said sketching out the portrait first really helped them figure out what they wanted to include and was good practice before the finished product.
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