Museum Self Portraits, ages 10-14

Wow! These are fabulous! The students chose a famous painting from a stack of books that I have. We also looked at some examples of some current artists that have done similar paintings of people viewing art in museums. We talked about frames, flooring, shadows, how we stand, posture... and then put themselves viewing the painting as if they were in the museum. Note the great observation used to copy the paintings, the wonderful frames, lighting direction and their posture.

 used opposite colors!

Self portraits from the teen class in spring

I just found some photos of student work that I wanted to share.
I suggested to the students to do a self portrait using values (black and white) with a color pop.
One is done on full sheet watercolor paper with subtle green eyes and the other is acrylic on 16x20 canvas.

Shoe Self Portraits, Teen Class

What makes a portrait? A face, a figure...? Well I think it is a story that you create that tells you something about the person you are painting. Everyone has their own shoe style and personality/posture in the way they stand. So we did shoe self portraits. I took photos and the students used a simple graphing method to put on canvas. The great thing is, is that you can really tell who each of these portraits are based on the shoe and the way they stand.

Self Portrait, ages 9, 10, 11

Self portraits with a story.... We looked at examples of self portraits throughout history and talked about backgrounds, clothing and what the portraits say about the time and people. The students created their self portraits sharing some of what is important to them.   Acrylic 16x20 inches.

Self Portrait, ages 7 and 8

I showed the students examples of portraits. Mona Lisa, American Gothic... by Warhol, Normal Rockwell, Sargent and many, many more. We talked about the use of backgrounds, clothing, color, gesture and expression to tell the story. I like the stories they chose to tell in their own self portraits.