Some Back to School Art Ideas: Self Portraits

Posted on August 20, 2009 by artlessonsforkids

The holidays are sadly over and it’s time to think about what to do the first week back at school. It’s always exciting to start a new school year but I need some inspiration soon as my brain is still at the beach in Thailand!

Anyway, I thought I would share with you some ideas I started with my previous year. All About Me themes are always popular in the elementary grades so here are some self portrait ideas that I hope will inspire you. I would love to hear some of your ideas too.

Here we go…

Giant self portraits in grade four

This was a fun project the kids loved. These self portraits were HUGE and a bit time consuming but very worth doing.

Cardboard life sized self portraits in grade five

I love cardboard and I remember the school was brand new at the time so there was tons of it everywhere. Being the recycle queen that I am ( and ALL art teachers are ) I decided why not make life sized self portraits with the grade five class? It was a hit!

Self portraits with construction paper in grade one

Grade ones loved making their life sized portraits with butcher paper. Get the kids into pairs and have them outline each other. This is also a great way for them to get to know each other. The kids paint in the details and then add a life sized photograph of their faces and you have a winner here!

Progressive self portraits in grade two

These self portraits were awesome and showed a real improvement in facial placement. The grade twos did three progressive self portraits and were quite surprised to see how they got better with each try.

Need more ideas for your portraits and self-portraits theme? Check Fun with Self-Portraits and Fun With Self-Portraits II e-books you can download now and save tons of planning time.

Have fun!

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Oil Pastel Cats in Grade One

Posted on July 18, 2009 by artlessonsforkids

Get your oil pastels ready because this is a really great lesson you can adapt for any subject matter. The kids voted on cats but you can do dogs, fish, butterflies, etc.

We looked at several cat pictures and talked about what we liked about them. We discussed characteristics such as what they look like, colors, shape of the eyes,etc. It is so important to discuss all this prior to beginning a lesson because it sets the mood for the kids. If you can create a slide show with different kinds of cats then this is a bonus! Google images has plenty of pictures for kids to look at. Don’t forget to also show cats in art so they see how artists also liked to draw, paint, sculpt cats.

I gave out 12×18 white paper–because I believe kids need a lot of space to draw. All our cats were to be drawn in a sitting down position. You can do running cats, sleeping cats, cats on a chair, on a rug, etc. After a quick demonstration how to ‘sketch’ the cat face and get proportions right, the kids were eager to start on their own cats.

Details were added like stripes, patches, dots and zig-zags . The cats could also be unreal and have details such as swirls, different shapes on them, etc. The pencil lines were outlined with a black marker and the cats colored in with oil pastels. If your students want to color in a purple cat, blue cat, let them go wild–this is art class!

The background was painted with watered down tempera paint and left to dry. Final details such as bows, ribbons in the ear and borders were done with scrap pieces of tissue paper.

Didn’t these turn out gorgeous?

My son’s cat!

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Tape Art in Grade Two

Posted on July 3, 2009 by artlessonsforkids

The school was giving away some potted plants and I was more than happy to give them a home in my classroom. I have big windows with plenty of light and plants are a great subject for drawing, observations etc. If any of your students finish their work early you can always send them off to get a plant and draw it!

My grade two students were learning about plants in science so this was a great opportunity to integrate art with their science curriculum. I placed different pots along the tables and gave out 12×18 sized paper for everyone. The object of the lesson was to observe the plant, make an outline drawing and ‘color‘ in the still life drawing with colored tape. They started by drawing the pot. If you do this lesson, make sure the kids ‘sketch‘ their drawings so if they need to erase dark something, dark pencil lines aren’t left behind!

Once they were happy with their outline which had to include the pot, the pot’s rim and the plants and flowers they were ready to color in with the tape. Everyone chose a color for their pot and stuck and overlapped pieces of tape to cover the pot area. Next they chose another color for the rim and finally other tape colors for the leaves and flowers. Make sure your students use different colored tape for the different areas such as the base of the pot, the rim, the flowers, buds, leaves, details on the leaves etc. Encourage your students to stick down the tape and to tear off pieces as well as cut them with scissors.

When they were finished, they added a detail to the face of the pot such as a heart, sun etc and with colored pencils lightly drew a background and table for their potted plant. Make sure it is lightly drawn so the pot remains the focus.

I loved how they turned out, don’t you? If you want to see more pictures then click here to see the slide show I created for this lesson.