Studio Art: Grid Portraits

I promise I haven't left you!  I've just been doing a little soul searching, if you want to call it that.  In other words, I have been feeling like I'm in a rut and I'm not happy with the way I'm teaching, particularly in my elementary grade levels.  So, with that being said, my next few posts are going to be about my adventures in TAB!!  Yep, that's right.  I'm working on transitioning a few elementary classes into choice based learning.

At the high school level, I feel as if the choice based learning comes a bit more naturally, though I still feel as if I need to loosen the reigns a bit.  So, as I share some of our high school projects that we have completed this year so far, you'll hopefully notice me loosening up on requirements.  

But, enough of that for now.  These oil pastel self-portrait projects were completed by my Studio Art students (9th-12 graders), and it was something that really pushed the boundaries for them.  We looked at artwork by various portrait artists, including VanGogh, Frida Kahlo, Kehinde Wiley, and Chuck Close, discussing how each artist used the self-portrait for a different reason.  Using the grid method, I had students draw a "selfie" they had taken of themselves onto 16"x 20" paper.

Initially, I left the choice of material open ended for students, as long as they used color.  I decided to use oil pastels to do my self portrait, something I've never done with oil pastels before.  Many of the students decided to follow suite, seeing how I was challenging myself to do something new.  I have to say I'm extremely happy with how these turned out!

The 10 Looks of Mrs. Impey: "I left my sketchbook in my locker...can I go get it?"

Done by our two exchange students...fabulous work for two ladies who haven't hard art classes in years!

These students used colored pencils, or a combination of colored pencils and oil pastels.

I also used these drawing projects as my interim assessment for DDI.  I don't know if any of you have to do Data Driven Instruction, but my fellow art teachers and I have been getting creative with how we give our assessments.  Instead of doing tests or quizzes, like we had to do last year, we are making the artwork the assessment.  Since we have been stressing observational drawing, this fit in perfectly as it fell in line with my curriculum but it also worked for our DDI rubric for the 2nd quarter.  Less work for me and less work for my students!

Studio Art: Micography Portraits

I am one of those art teachers that normally HATES doing self-portraits.  I have never liked drawing people.  Very rarely do I do more than one self-portrait lesson over a expanse of grade levels, yet here I am this year and I have already done two self-portrait projects, with a third one in the makings!  My Studio Art classes started their drawing unit a while back and we kicked off the unit with self-portraits. (Currently, they are finishing up mannequin drawings and we will be starting our last project for the unit tomorrow!)

Since my last bell ringer artist in Studio Art was Chuck Close, it seemed appropriate to do a self-portrait using the grid method.  We had a modeling day in class where students had to pose for three portraits.  I printed them out in black and white, they chose their favorite, and taped it into their sketchbooks.  I had them tape a piece of transparency paper over the top to draw the grid.  Doing it this way is an awesome way to ensure their picture doesn't get ruined if they mess up the grid!  A few students measured wrong and all they had to do was remove the transparency paper, tape a new one down, and start over.

Our pictures were 5"x7" and the drawing paper was 10"x14".  Makes for a good discussion about proportion as well!  (Ahem, math anyone??)

As a sketchbook assignment, I asked students to create a list of words about themselves on a page in their sketchbook.  They could simply list the words (though that got less points for creativity on my homework rubric), write a poem, illustrate them, etc.  The words from that homework assignment became the words they used on their projects.  This also, unknowlingly, integrated their current ELA Common Core module.  In Module 1, students in 9th grade just finished reading "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," by Karen Russell.  As part of the unit, students had to analyze characters from the book, using descriptive words.  Essentially, I was asking students to analyze themselves in this project, and many of the words they used to describe themselves were academic vocabulary words from their ELA unit!

The following collages are some progress shots with the finished product.