Larger than Life

Beginning of the year, meant lots of self portraits in various forms.  6th grade channeled all of their social media knowledge and took a look at avatars and cartoons.  We discovered that avatars often have exaggerated physical features.  We then compared these to Japanese manga and anime.  I was surprised many knew some mangas (Dragon-ball Z and others from my high school days). We also talked about the literary form of exaggeration (I like to use the fishing story example). We used faceyourmanga to exaggerate our physical features and of course had to blow them up to larger than life size!

We used a grid to help us enlarge our avatars and keep the correct proportion.  We then talked baout what we want to exaggerate about ourselves.  Often we focus on the things that we do not like rather than the things that are good about ourselves.  I have then make a list of the things they love about themselves and things about them that they want to exaggerate.   These are written in the background of their portraits.

I absolutely love how these turned out!  They did a fantastic job enlarging something that started so small to something so big!  They got a kick out of seeing our 3 and 4 year olds seeing these large portraits out in the hallway.  For some reason they were mesmerized by these portraits! 

My Goals Self-Portrait

These were done in the beginning of the school year but I just got a chance to take some pictures.  Here at St. Leo's, Middle School starts in 5th grade so I thought it would be a perfect time for them to think up some goals for their first year in Middle School!  I got the idea from Art Projects for Kids.

Self Portraits: Kindergarten

Kindergarten learned all about self-portraits! We looked at portraits painted by famous artists. They first drew themselves by looking into a mirror but with no instruction. We then discussed the different shapes found in our faces. We noticed that our eyes are not circles but actually footballs or almonds. Kindergarten used their new knowledge to draw themselves a second time. After we added some realistic colors and details.