based on I Only Like What I Like by Julie Baer
Goal: Students will create a portrait of someone they love.
Students should bring in a photo of someone dear to them: a family member, friend, teacher, pet, etc., to use as a reference for their portrait.
Supplies :
-Magazines (teachers pre-cut color swatches and sort into boxes)
-glue stick for every student (make sure it’s moist and complete)
-colored card stock or construction paper
-scissors for every student
Preparation : Pre-cut color swatches from magazines into large spheres, ovals, triangles, and rectangles, and sort into separate boxes or piles of each shape. Cut the colored swatches out of their original imagery contexts; they should exist solely as printed colored pieces of paper. If there will be more than one table of students, place a full set of boxes on each work table to save time and aid progress. Students will choose from the pre-cut shapes as well as cutting some up themselves for hair and features, etc.
Concepts (presented age-appropriately):
Collage: using cut-up or torn paper (or other materials) instead of paint to make a painting
Reference: the image students look at and work from to create their portrait
Subject: the person in the photo
Profile: sideways view
Three-quarters view: between a head-on and a profile view.
Composition: the arrangement of shapes to fill the entire picture plane
Spatial relationship: “this to this to this,” or how an eye lines up to the top of
the ear, etc.
Negative space: the space around the image extending to the edge of the picture plane
Memorial, homage: a record of remembering someone with love, paying tribute to someone
Process:
1. Show students examples of portraits from art history, including some unfamiliar and some familiar,
such as the Mona Lisa and Picasso’s portraits. Show collage portraits from I
Only Like What I Like.
2. Portraits are really very simple, and come in just a few basic formats. This lesson will focus on simple compositions, just the head and shoulders and maybe upper chest. Show simple portrait composition “templates,” explaining about negative space or “coloring the air,” and introduce shape awareness. For older students, you can show how faces are naturally divided up, both adults’ (1/3, 1/3, 1/3)and children’s (1/2, 1/4, 1/4). Explain different views: head on, three-quarters, profile.
3. Students choose background card stock color.
4. Students look closely at their reference photograph. Help them find the basic shapes inherent in them: head is oval, neck-shoulders-upper-chest component is triangle. Help them mentally arrange the composition they want to make.
5. Students choose a piece of collage paper to begin, for instance a big yellow oval shape for the head, and then figure out where it should go on their picture. Help them use the photo to see where the head should go on their picture. Then glue it down.
6. Students choose next large basic shape from pre-cut collage paper – triangle or rectangle for body and adhere it. The basic composition is now set.
7. Students keep looking at their reference photo to determine what to cut and paste next, and where the piece of collage paper should go in relation to the rest of the picture. We are not trying to make an identical image, but using the photo as reference to see where the eyes are in relation to the nose, how much space the forehead takes up, where the ears are in relation to the eyes. The more you look at your reference, the more you learn, and the better your portrait will look to you.
8. When students have got the basic composition going, they can develop it, collaging on top, adding details, adding images, fine-tuning, depending on students’ age and the amount of time allotted. They can work into the negative space, dividing up the big shape into smaller shapes. They can add details into the body and clothes: stripes on the shirt, buttons, a logo on the t-shirt.
9. As a visual exercise, they should use at least four different versions of a color, e.g., if a shirt is blue, have students find different blues to build up a rich blue shirt. They will feel gratified, because it will be very beautiful immediately.
10. Encourage the students to be as crazy and “weird” as they want.
11. As portraits develop, help older students continue to compare reference and portrait: point out relationship of features, e.g. space between hairline and eyebrow in photo and how it compares with that of their work. Help students begin to habitually perceive spatial relationships.
12. Ask students to think about their subject. Would it feel meaningful to add words to the picture? Do any words pop into their minds: the punch line of a joke, a line of a song, the subject’s name? Words are powerful reminders of people. You can help them cut ready made letters from magazine ads or cut out their own letters, or hand-write words with marker or colored pencil. They can also add things into their composition that are symbolic or meaningful to the subject: a butterfly, a bird, a tree, a bicycle, a cake.
Note: If a student arrives without a reference picture, a quick interview will produce some favorite things for a subject. Then find a photograph or drawing in a book for the student to “work from.” Students can by all means work from memory, but having a concrete reference sometimes reduces down-time and daydreaming, and teaches “looking with an artist’s eye.”