April 5, 2010

Father's Day Portraits

I haven't forgotten my blog but holidays are holidays and that means no work at all. In this article I will tell you about the project we have made for Father's Day.

The same project but with some changes was made with all the groups at school. In my case, I carried them out with the first cycle and the third cycle of Primary Education.

The idea was that students would prepare a self-portrait to give as a present to their fathers.

The project involved several stages as well as several art techniques depending on the ages and the method used.

The first stage is the same for everybody. We need a digital mug shot of each of the students and then, convert it to a pencil sketch with Photoshop or through some web pages specialized in that:



Once we have the converted photo, we must print it and give a copy to students.
In the second stage, students with coloured pencils have to trace the different lines on the face and the hair and afterwards apply colour to eyes, mouth, skin...

Students learn not to press down when colouring because if they do it their portraits will look like clown faces.

The language contents of this stage are obvious: name of colours and the parts of the face and other features (sideburns, lines, beauty spots, freckles...)

If you want to make a nice background you can use a new technique I've learned, you need to sharpen the graphite of a coloured pencil and keep the shavings, you have to place the shavings in the picture and, with your finger, drag them around the portrait. Students love doing it and showing their dirty fingers.

The next and last stage deals with framing the picture. At this moment, I took into account the age and the abilities of the students and I used different techniques depending on that.

For framing the self-portraits of the first cycle, you can use a piece of thick cardboard in order to stick the picture, corrugated cardboard, foam and tissue paper. The teacher will cut stripes of corrugated cardboard and students have to stick them around their portrait; using some heart models, students will draw the shape on the foam and cut them, the hearts will be used to decorate the frame, it's also possible to do some flowers with the tissue paper.

The language contents would be actions related to art (cut, stick, glue, draw...) and nouns (heart, shape, flower...).

The technique used for the third cycle is more difficult. You need pieces of puzzles, scholar tempera paint, superglue and a thin plank. Students will paint the puzzle pieces with tempera mixing primary colours on a palette. Next they'll glue the picture to the thin plank and the puzzles pieces around the picture.

The linguistic contents are related to painting: the name of primary colours, how to obtain the rest of colours, vocabulary for utensils (brush, palette, tempera, watercolours...)

Finally with all the projects we can make an oral presentation. All the students have to show their job in front of the class and present it to their mates making a description: I have got blue eyes, a small mouth, freckles...

No comments:

Post a Comment