Middle school self-portraits with style

Self-portraits!

These were done by my sixth graders. 

I wanted to squeeze in portraits but I was in a time crunch

so I went for a graphic design, limited color palette approach. 

Their practice drawings included shading but not the final products. 

I gave the students the option to do sunglasses in lieu of eyes but surprisingly only a few of them took me up on my offer. 

The backgrounds were inspired by Beatriz Milhazes. 

The kids were limited to sharpie, fat black marker, grey marker, and one color. 

After this project we dove into a unit focused on the principles of design, so this was a great segue from the last unit focused on realistic drawing into the new one. 

Finally some finished ones...!

Some of my fifth graders have (finally) finished up their Beatriz Milhazes-inspired projects. 

I was a little nervous they may not follow through all the way to the end full steam ahead - but here are are a few that definitely did not disappoint with their complex compositions! 

making some colorful progress

Moving along with our Beatriz Milhazes-inspired oil pastel color blending - stencil lesson.... 

we've added on some more color blending tricks- trying to decipher strategies for making shapes appear either 2-D or 3-D, closer and farther away, as well as some cool color tempera cake paint. 

Spheres, Stencils, Shapes, Swoon & Beatriz Beginnings

As I have said before my school is new this year- so my fifth graders are coming from a variety of educational and art educational backgrounds. Generally I have to assume they do not have a solid foundation so I give them big props for a lot of their accomplishments with me this year knowing this is the first go around for many of my students with these materials and concepts. 

I'm trying to really layer my projects with mini-lessons that cover a lot of turf. 

This project I am very excited about. 

The first day I set up dodge balls on the tables and we reviewed 

2-D shapes vs. 3-D forms.

We also reviewed how a shadow occurs (light source, object, surface). 

This is the basic worksheet we followed. 

We filled in the Medium box first, then the light, then the dark. 

One circle was for a 2-dimensional shading using medium pressure. 

The bottom circle was for their first try at shading spheres: 

 Day 2: I showed my students this 8 minute YouTube video of Beatriz Milhazes, a Brazilian contemporary artist. It's a great video, I recommend watching it even if you don't show it to your students!

In Beatriz's interview she talks about her influences for her shapes, her process, and artists who influenced her like Mondrian and Matisse. 

After the video we reviewed Organic vs. Geometric shapes and lines. 

Each student made one organic and one geometric stencil out of a manilla folder. 

Day 3: Students traced 3 circles on a grey construction paper. 

They also traced each stencil at least two times and could use a ruler or other people's stencils to finish their composition.

Each student then chose a color set to make one circle into a 3-dimensional sphere:

Student progress so far:

More oil pastel and some painting to come!

I also have a field trip to the Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston scheduled for the students in a few weeks. They will have an introduction to contemporary art and also get to see this new mural and cut paper stencil installation by Swoon. This is another reason I wanted the students to understand the concept of a stencil.