"Face the Facts"
In this two-week course, students in grades 5-8 developed skills in rendering a likeness. Their first project was a group portrait which they created square by square, without knowing who or what they were drawing!
Student pictures were then taken with a digital camera, printed out, and they drew self-portraits using the grid method.
As a "filler" activity, the student pictures were altered in Photoshop to create a high contrast print-out.
By placing the front of the print-out against a window, students were able to outline the black parts of the picture by tracing onto the "back" of the paper with a pencil.
Next they taped the print-out onto a sheet of drawing paper (front side up), and traced around the black parts again. The pressure of this tracing transferred the graphite image (on the back) to the drawing paper. Then, using both thick and thin markers or pens, they created rather stunning--yet easy--high contrast self-portraits.
As a final quick project, some students drew pictures of themselves on Shrinky Dink material to create miniature self-portraits!
