Portrait Drawing

I teach a portrait drawing class once a week at my school. It's comprised of really dedicated art students from Grades 4-7. They choose this class so it's a lovely group of kids (all girls!)

The girls printed photo references off the internet. This was one of their finally projects once they had learned all about proportion, symmetry, practiced drawing all the different facial features, etc. 

Some of them used simply pencil, others watercolour pencils, coloured pencils and watercolours.

pencil plus watercolours, Grade 7

Grade 6

Grade 6, coloured pencils

Grade 5, watercolour pencils

 

The student below (Grade 7) did a series of three drawings of Frances Bean Cobain:

Tissue Paper Grid Portraits

This was a fun lesson I did with my Grade 5 students that I found HERE. They learned the basics of proportion in a face. They practiced on scrap paper first, then drew their good copy on heavy 9 x 12" white paper. Then they outlined the face in Sharpie. Finally, they used bleeding tissue paper and cut it into squares. Using water and a paintbrush, they applied it to their paper, let it sit for a bit, then peeled it off to reveal the colour tranfer.

Chinese Blue & White Porcelain Vases

This is a fantastic lesson I've incorporated into my "Art of China" unit. 

I pinned this lesson months and months ago and finally got around to it this year 

with my Grade 9/10 class.

It's found HERE on one of my all time favorite art blogs: http://arteascuola.com/

She gives all the instructions on her blog.

The only thing we did differently was use white acrylic paint instead of gesso. We also used simple bamboo sticks/skewers for the scratching part. My kids loved this lesson- a couple even saying it was their favorite all year :)

Pi (π) City Skyline

 

I teach a class on Fridays called "MART" to a group of Grade 4 - 6 students. Another teacher and I team teach the class- it's essentially Math inspired art projects.

I found this project HERE on the website: http://www.whatdowedoallday.com/

There's great instructions on the website and we more or less followed them.

 

Pi (π) is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Pi is a constant number, meaning that for all circles of any size, Pi will be the same. The number pi is extremely useful when solving geometry problems involving circles.

 

 

The kids started off by painting their background on a sheet of heavy 9x12" white paper. They could use any media the wanted- most chose to use liquid watercolours.

 

 

While the backgrounds were drying, they created their city skyline. I gave them each a printout of the Pi number. Using regular school graph paper, they started with the first number (3) and coloured in (using markers) the first three squares vertically on the graph paper. Then they went along the graph paper horizontally, colouring in the next number in Pi. They only got to use about 19 numbers, more or less, before they ran out of paper, but some of the keeners taped graph paper together to allow for a longer number!!

 

Once the skyline is coloured in, carefully cut it out and glue stick it to the painted background paper.

 

Grade 4,5 finished artwork :)