Monday, February 27, 2012

1st grade self-portraits!

How did I forget to post these?!

By the way - the girl in the middle is not Mickey Mouse; she had frizzy fuzzy hair and it was up in two tight pony tails on her head and it looked just like two furry reddish-brown spheres!

I always tell my first graders they are 'real artists' and therefore will do real artist things. So they made sculptures, they will do life drawing, and recently they drew these wonderful self-portraits using mirrors.

The pencil drawings were traced with a thin Sharpie, then colored with "Color Sticks" - a sharpenable, and somewhat erasable crayon product. Then students cut them out, and selected a piece of wallpaper to back their artwork. Finally they picked a value of brown paper to 'frame' their artwork. The only challenge was that the glue sticks would NOT stick to the wallpaper. In the end I re-glued every single one of them, with a low temp hot glue gun.

Here's a display of some of the portraits all together. There's another bulletin board also filled with the portraits that I neglected to photograph.

7 comments:

  1. Phyl - These are charming! I never thought of using wallpaper as a background - could even be a Matisse-themed self-portrait.

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  2. I have soooooo much wallpaper that I never seem to find a use for....these are marvelous!!! What a great idea!

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  3. I love the effect of the wallpaper against their beautiful pencil portraits. It gives them a bit of a vintage feel. Now where can I round up some wallpaper? Wonderful! :)

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    1. Mary, go to places like Lowe's or Home Depot or even better, the local home renovation places, and ask if they can call you when they have discontinued books - explain they will be going to a school and you should get lots for free!

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  4. It's a great idea and very creative! The portraits are beautiful!
    It is a pleasure to walk through your blog.
    A big hug

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    1. How sweet of you to say that! Thanks, Tati!

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  5. I,too, love the delicacy of the wallpaper background -- and the expressions are priceless!! So impressive for 1st graders!!

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