"Modi" Myself

Self Portrait Start

I know a lot of art teacher’s start the year with self portraits and WHY NOT????

Self Portraits are great for several reasons…

           `   Teachers can easily see a students’ artistic growth from one year to the next.

             `  Kids can see their own improvement as artists

               `  Families have something to see their students grow up and grow as artists.

I would love to share some of our portraits.

In 4th grade we studied the elongate portraits of Amedeo Modgliani. Students were challenged to “stretch” what they know about proportion and placement, of facial features, from third grade to make somewhat silly and moody “Modi” inspired self-portraits. I first got the idea for these portraits from my dear friend Lauren at Dali's Mustache. 

http://dalimoustache.blogspot.com/2010/01/modigliani-self-portraits.html

After learning about Modgliani students draw their own portraits, we spend some time discussing warm and cool color schemes. Students then fill in their background with the color scheme of their choice.

Students grow their painting skills by using contrasting colors to create highlights and shadow.

These are some of the fabulous results.