Thursday, March 8, 2012

"Cat"tastic Portraits with Personality


My first grade students have been working with the concept of portraits quite a bit this year. 
I came across a set of postcards by a local artist this winter when I was at the BizarreBazaar:
Sarah Coyne of Egg-a-Go-Go
"Cats in Clothes" series

I loved the cats with personalities of people and it reminded me that I inherited this book from a former teacher, "Impressionist Cats" by Susan Herbert:



The kids got a kick out of the cat portraits and impressionists impressions. More importantly though, they were great examples of how portraits can show a close up of a person, a whole body, emotion, clothing, occupation, etc.!

We approached our lesson like the postcards were composed- with an oval shaped 'frame' to draw our cat portrait within and a 'wall paper' background. My goal was to have each student have a closer up portrait and also a whole body portrait- due to severe sickness traveling throughout our student body there are many who only came out with one finished piece- but I still have piles of them and they are hilarious (and genius)!








1 comment:

  1. very cool! great variety in character and detail. glad to hear the artist was so receptive to the kiddos work:)

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