6th grade Self Portraits - Student Work

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!

6th grade - Two Point Perspective

Two point perspective is the next step after you master one point perspective.  This perspective happens when you are looking at an edge of an object.  When this happens, the object appears to be connected to two vanishing points on the horizon line that are wide spread.  Two point perspectivce actually looks more real to life than one point because people see things from an edge (called an oblique angle) more often than head on (as in one point perspective).

The image above demonstrates how to create 2-point perspective.  Below is a drawing using two point perspective.

Since there is one point perspective and two point perspective, can there be more vanishing points?

YES!

Technically, you can use an infinite number of vanishing points.  This works really well if the furniture in your room is not all lined up with the walls.

There is also something called 3 point perspective. 

This is useful for drawing a skyscrapper from the viewpoint of a pedestrian on the sidewalk, or a sun shadow being cast by a building.

Mrs. Watson's still life

Of course, I won't ask my students to do something that I am not willing to do myself! Here is the still life I made while the students made theirs. This was done on a large sheet of gray paper taped onto the front board. I used crayon, so there was no erasing allowed for me! Fortunately for the students, they got to use pencils... and erasers!

6th grade - Color Wheel HOMEWORK!!!

Today I handed out the next homework assignment. It is a color wheel to fill out at home. You can use whatever coloring supplies you have on hand at home.

There are 3 rings on the color wheel. The outer ring should be the colors tinted, the middle ring is the pure hue, and the inner ring is the color shaded.

There are examples below of what it should look like in the 4 most common mediums (art supplies), crayon, colored pencil, markers, and watercolor paints.

If you lose your copy, click on the image and print a new one!

Mr. Bilbao's class - self portraits