Tuesday, April 17, 2012

6th grade self portraits



The sixth grade classes starting to work on oil pastel painted self portraits.  In the past, I have had the students create a grid across the black and white photo, then slowly transfer the image by drawing the lines and shapes found in each square in the grid onto grid squares on their drawing paper.  However, I found that the grid drawings take a LONG time.  Too long!  So, we have taken a short cut and left out the drawing aspect of the project.

Instead, we are simply going straight to the painting step of the project.  Here are the steps as we followed them:

  • After receiving an 8" x 10" black and white photo of themselves on plain copy paper, students use a pencil to outline every value change they can identify in the image.  
  • Then students create a 5 level value scale in black and white. 
  • Next, students select one to three colors of oil pastel, a black, and a white.
  • Using the oil pastels, they create a color scale right on the gray scale that matches each value.
  • Now students can use the value scale to select the right paint value to go in each area that they outlined in the beginning and paint RIGHT ON THE PHOTO!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there, iv been looking for this kind of art leson for a LONG time and its exactly what im looking for!! Thankyou! Do you have a unit/lesson plan that goes with this? please contact me with any info you have about this pastel portrait art (smp39@waikato.ac.nz). Thankyou so much. Sarah (New Zealand).

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