SELF-PORTRAITS WITH THE TOUCH OF A FINDER

 

Georgia Standards

 

South Carolina Standards

 

Key Vocabulary

 

Materials

• • Pencils and erasers 
  • Watercolors
  • Paint brushes and water cups
  • Crayons, oil pastels, or permanent black markers
  • 9x12 sheets of mixed media paper 

• Optional technology extension: Charged iPad with Kidsdoodle or drawing app downloaded

 

Instructional Design

Opening/Activating Strategy

• Project a portrait by one of the Renaissance masters, such as Diego Velazquez’s “La Infanta Margarita” or Raphael’s “Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione”.
• Engage students in the Artful Thinking Routine: See, Think, Wonder.
  • First, students will identify what they see in the image. Ask students to identify five things that they recognize in the artwork, such as colors or objects.
  • Next, ask students what they think might be going on in the image. Why do they think the artist made it? Who is the person depicted? 
  • Finally, ask students what they wonder about the image. What questions would they ask the artist? The person being depicted?
• Facilitate a class-wide discussion around students’ observations, inferences, and questions.
• Explain to students this artwork is an example of a portrait. Portraits are visual depictions of people–often posed. When an artist makes a portrait of themself, it is called a self-portrait.
• Explain that before the Renaissance, artists didn’t depict people realistically. Renaissance artists used measurement and proportion in painting portraits to make them look realistic.

 

Work Session

• Tell students that they will be making their own self-portraits using basic shapes! Ask students for some examples of basic shapes.
• Pass out pencils and mixed media paper.
• Have students lightly draw a large oval shape onto their paper.  
• Next, ask students what shape their eyes are. Have students draw two ovals for their eyes and circles within their ovals for their irises. Then, students should draw in eyebrows with curved lines.  
• Ask students what shape their noses are. 
• Show students how to draw two straight, vertical lines down from the inside of each eye. This is the bridge of their nose. To make the center of their nose, students should lightly draw a circle. Have students lightly erase the top of the circle.
• Next, have students add their nostrils. You can describe these shapes as a forward and backward “C” shape or half circles.  
• Next, ask students what shape a mouth is. Students may say a moon (like a crescent moon) or a half circle for a smiling mouth.
• Tell students that their ears are located between the top of the eyebrows and bottom of the nose. Ask students what shape they could use for their ears. Students may say a half circle.
• Have students lightly sketch in their hair, neck and shoulders last. 
• Have students go over the lines of their face with permanent black markers, crayons, or oil pastels. 
• Tell students to set their portraits aside. They will come back to them later.
• Lead a discussion around what characteristics are. Differentiate between physical characteristics, like hair or eye color, and personality characteristics.
  • Ask students to share examples of personality characteristics. This can be done as a whole group, or have students work in small groups to create lists and share them with the class.
  • Next, have students generate a list of adjectives to describe their personality. Remind them that personality characteristics are things that cannot be seen on the outside. Encourage students to generate a list of five to seven adjectives to describe themselves.
    • Project the sentence starter “I am _________.” on the board. Tell students that they should be able to insert their adjective into the sentence starter without adding any additional words. If they have to add “a” or “the”, the part of speech is a noun and not an adjective. 
  • Provide time for students to share their adjectives with the class, in small groups, or with a partner. 
• Tell students that they will write their adjectives in the negative space of their self-portrait. The negative space is the “empty space”, or space around the subject of the artwork. Encourage them to write big and fill the space.
  • Students should write their adjectives with the same material (permanent black marker, crayon, or oil pastel) that they used to go over the lines of their self portrait.
• Finally, students will add color and detail to their self portraits using watercolor. The crayon or oil pastel will “resist” the watercolor. If using a permanent black marker, the marker won’t smear when the watercolor is applied.
• Students should finish their masterpieces by writing informative sentences about themselves using the adjectives in their self-portraits. Students’ writing should meet grade-level standards criteria.

 

Optional technology extension: Demonstrate how to use Kidsdoodle or another drawing app on iPad. Lead a discussion of the pros and cons of using a drawing app versus hand drawing methods and the differences in proportion  Using the camera on the iPad, take individual portrait photos of each student and print it. Have students compare photos to original sketches and app-generated drawings. How does each differ from the other?

 

Closing Reflection

• Have students celebrate their self-portraits by conducting a gallery walk, in which students walk around the room and take a closer look at all the artwork.
• Facilitate a discussion around how we see ourselves and appreciating what each person brings to the class community.

 

Assessments

Formative

Teachers will assess students’ understanding of the content throughout the lesson by observing students’ participation and contributions to the activator, ability to use basic shapes to create their self-portraits, discussion of personality characteristics and adjectives, and conferencing with students during the writing process.

 

Summative

CHECKLIST

• Students can create a self-portrait using basic shapes.  
• Students can describe their personality characteristics using adjectives.

 

DIFFERENTIATION 

Acceleration:  Have students engage in the same art and writing process about a character from a text being studied in class. Have students place tracing paper over a printed copy of a Renaissance portrait and tracing the basic shapes that they can see with pencil. Then, students can use what they observed about how basic shapes can make up a face to create their own self-portraits rather than following the guided lesson. Remediation:  As a class, create a word bank of adjectives for students to choose from when describing themselves.  Provide a printed oval outline on cardstock paper for students rather than having them draw their own.

 

 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Renaissance art

 

*This integrated lesson provides differentiated ideas and activities for educators that are aligned to a sampling of standards. Standards referenced at the time of publishing may differ based on each state’s adoption of new standards.

Ideas contributed by: Darby Jones and Katy Betts.

Revised and copyright:  July 2024 @ ArtsNOW