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 :
Paint (tempera, acrylic, or poster paint), brushes (at least two sizes), jars of water to wash
brushes, and paper.
Preparation : Each student should have access to a full spectrum of colors of paint, each color in its own cup, his own water jar for cleaning brushes, and two sheets of paper: one for mixing on, and one for painting on. Pass out paper.
Concepts (taught age appropriately):
Subject: the person in the photo
Profile: sideways view
Composition: the arrangement of shapes to fill the entire picture plane
Negative space, background, “painting the air”: 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 the Mona Lisa and Picasso’s
portraits, as well as some unfamiliar ones.
2. Portraits are really very simple, and come in just a few basic formats. This lesson is about simple compositions, just the head and shoulders. Show simple portrait composition templates, pointing out basic shapes. Show how faces are naturally divided up into sections. Demonstrate different views: head on, three-quarters, profile.
3. Have students look closely at their reference photograph. Hold up individual photos and show simple shapes inherent in them. Paint an example of how one picture might be composed, very simply and abstractly.
4. Students mix up a color, using at least two colors , for the head and paint the circle or oval onto the rectangle of card stock, filling it solidly with paint.
5. Next show how the body (limited to upper chest in this case) is a basic shape: triangle or rectangle. Students paint in that shape of the body.
6. Hold up individual students’ pictures and point out the negative space, the background, by calling it “painting the air.” Have them mix up a color and fill in the negative space of the entire picture plane.
7. When students have got the basic composition going, they begin developing it, adding facial features and other details by looking carefully at reference photo, and continuing on with fine-tuning. They paint on top of dry painted surfaces, adding richness. They can work into the negative space, dividing up the big shape into smaller shapes, putting the subject into an environment, either natural or invented. They can add details and design elements into the body and clothes: stripes on the shirt, buttons, a logo on the t-shirt.
8. As a visual exercise, they should use at least two different colors for mixing every color, e.g., if a shirt is blue, have students not merely use the blue straight from the blue cup, but create different blues by one time mixing blue with a little yellow, or another time with a little green, etc., to build up a rich blue shirt. They will feel gratified, because it will be very beautiful immediately.
11. Encourage the students to be as crazy and “weird” as they want.
12. As portraits develop, help 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 and identify spatial relationships, age appropriately.
13. 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 write for them. Students might also add things into their composition that are meaningful to the subject: a butterfly, a bird, a tree, etc.
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.