10.23.2013

Art Week! Wednesday: People and Portraits

WEDNESDAY MORNING was actually a bit of a bust (much like getting this posted on Wednesday...), because we were busy and the girls were getting over the thrill of Art Week. So we had no morning activity. I had intended to talk about figure drawing, but didn't get to it. Check out some figure drawing stuff for kids at the Artful Parent.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON we got back in the game with self-portraits. I drew an example oval face with a line down the center to demonstrate proportions and other things, like making shadows around the nose, and the shape of the eyes and nose. Find a more in depth discussion of teaching portraits to children at That Artist Woman.


I helped them draw the faces carefully first and then I gave them more freedom during the painting. I was less precise with my four year old, because she was getting tired of painting already, and I wanted to keep it enjoyable.  My six year old word hard to get the proportions correct and did lots of erasing and re-drawing.



After we finished we spent some time going through our art books and looking at portraits by the masters. Once again, L liked the expressionists the best, but she also enjoyed seeing that there are many ways to do things. We used some of coloring pages of portraits from the Masterpiece Coloring Book again. These are nice to do with pastels on paper while looking at a copy of the original online.



I would have liked to have done more with people and portraits, but we were a bit burnt out on this day. But like the landscapes, I think this served as a good foundation and we can try portraits again later, next time adding shoulders, and backgrounds and perhaps drawing portraits of each other. We all enjoyed L's family portrait a few years ago, and now it might be time to try that again with the new information we've learned.



Keep up with the rest of Art Week here:
Get Ready
Monday: Experimenting with Materials and Textures
Tuesday: Landscapes and Space
Wednesday: People and Portraits
Thursday: Storytelling and Comic Books
Friday: The Exhibit

2 comments:

Chara said...

I'm really enjoying this week! I want to sit down with Jonah and try to work on portraits at some point. He loves to draw really intricate scene, but faces are pretty elemental. Thanks for the links, since I have no idea what I'm doing.

:)

Martha said...

Portraits are one of my favorites (to look at and make, of others and even myself, I ♥ looking back at the ones I did as a child and adult, in college), as my girls get older I find it's more difficult for them to draw self portraits.