I received an email from a teacher asking about our Self-Portrait lesson in Fifth Grade (view the full gallery of images on Artsonia). I thought, maybe someone else might like to hear the same answers I gave her about how we do this project and my product recommendations so I posted the questions and my answers below:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Do you use Tempera paint? Yes, What brand? Sax's brand Versatemp
2. Do you pre-mix fleshtones or have the kids do it? I use the multicultural paints and let them pick one for skin and one for shade of their skin.
3. How do you handle the distribution of paint? I have these great containers that we just keep refilling. We call the skin colors by number just to have a reference. I write the number on the lids (looks like these). I see a lot of different colors in your students' work, but I can't imagine having every color out on every table! With these containers I just set out three strips of colors one is skin, one is primary/secondary and one is black, white, gray, and browns.
4. Do you have them outline with Sharpie last? I prefer Redimark Permanent markers because they're thicker and juicer. I show them our movie about black marker first to get motivated to rescue their painting from Sloppy Brush.
5. How do you get them to do such a nice, neat job?! 
Thank you! but I really try to enforce craftsmanship. I just wrote an article about Good Artistry for the May issue of School Arts Magazine. You can view it here.
Add Comment
 
 
My Kindergarteners are getting ready to create their self-portraits. One of the hardest things about this process is finding the right place to put the features of the face. We played my homemade game, Pin the Feature on the Face to challenge them in a completely new way to find the right place for the features of the face:)
Take a look below at how the self-portraits turned out last year (or view the gallery on artsonia)
Add Comment