Art Journaling: The Self-Portrait

The girls came home with art notebooks from a tutorial that we tried for a few months, notebooks with pages full of different art projects that included watercolor and pastel and suddenly I was taken back to my days of art classes in college when I kept a regular art journal that combined drawing, collage, and writing.

We’ve been using sketchbooks for years here but we’ve always kept the sketching in the book, and the projects outside the book. Not anymore.  Now we pull out our nice big art notebooks and start dipping into a chosen medium.  We could do this everyday for three hours if no other school subjects called our names.  So far we’ve used watercolor, pastels, chalk, sharpie, and collage without any trouble.

This week we’re working with self-portraits.

Project 1: True To Life Self Portrait

On our first day we tried to be as true to the actual image of ourselves as possible.  I gave them pretty free reign with their mediums because the girls have been doing art forever and they often mix colors better than I can.  I also suggested they add in words about things they like and who they are into the background.

Mookie, age 10, sat in front of a mirror and came back with lots of insights about the shape of her nose, placement of her nostrils, and relationship of her mouth to her nose.  This is the best true self portrait she’s done to date.  She used sharpies and colored pencils. Her words are: Drama, Art, Books, Siblings, Mommy, Daddy, God, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit.

Jellybean, age 8, chose NOT to look in the mirror and she also adapted some exaggerated eyes that she had noticed in the self-portrait in my notebook.  The larger eyes actually suit her because her eyes are one of the features people notice first about her.  She used sharpie for outline(they all sketched in pencil first) and watercolor to fill in. Her words are: faith, love, life, hope, sister, determined, friend, I love ART.

Drummer boy, age 5, had a frustrating time trying to do art with his much more experienced sisters.  And I forget that he needs a little more guidance than his sisters.  So he gave up for the day then came back the next day and did a terrific self-portrait, he liked it, and he felt successful.  He used sharpie and watercolor.  His words are: big brother, legos, experiments, boy, kiss(he loves kisses).

Project 2: Calm/Wild Side Self-Portrait

Today we took our self-portraits to a new place and created portraits with a wild/calm side.

First we looked through picture books on hand and noticed calm and excited/wild colors. For calm we spotted a lot of soothing greens and blue, lighter shades of purple and yellow.  And for excited/wild we noticed oranges, reds, neon greens and bright purples.  We also looked at the pictures for lines in the art.  Straight  and soft curves for calm, and bigger curves, dips, points, and lively patterns for excited/wild.

After drawing a basic head, neck, and shoulder shape, they drew a line down the middle of the page. With pencil they added the details of their wild and calm sides, and then filled in with oil pastels for color.  You can see the original idea for this inspiration here.(This is a great website for art journaling, just scroll down her categories and look for art journaling and you’ll find a wealth of project ideas).

Mookie’s Self-portrait with demonstration of her wild side:

Jellybean:

Drummer Boy alternated back in forth between his wild and calm side but he did great with the concept.

I have plans for a few other styles of self-portraits in the coming weeks and as we ended today’s project Jellbean made a suggestion, “You could decide at the end which of our portraits looks the most like ourselves.” I answered back with my own challenge, “I wonder if it will be the one that looks most true to your actual features or the style that gives the best glimpse into what’s inside your heart.  We’ll have to see.”

An Art-ISH Activity

What You Need for this Art Project:

• White Paper(watercolor or card-stock) or  A Sketchbook
• Black Sharpie(water based pen will not work)
• Watercolors
• The book, Ish, by Peter Reynolds

I didn’t come up with this activity.  Our girls came home from art class the other day talking about this project, and we just had to do it as a family.

It’s a particularly good activity if you have a child who’s doubtful about their art abilities.  Or, if you are one of those moms who tell me all the time that you can’t draw.  Now you can draw-ish with your kids instead.  You may not be able to draw a horse, but you can draw something that is horse-ish.

First read the fabulous book, Ish, but Peter Reynolds.

Ramon delights in drawing until his older brother makes a rude comment.  After that moment, his enjoyment of drawing changes and he becomes super-critical of anything he tries to draw.  Finally he’s ready to quit when his little sister-Well, I won’t tell you the rest.  Read the book..

Next, grab a plain piece of paper or a sketchbook and with your black sharpie, draw 8 rectangle-ish boxes, leaving room beneath each box for a title.

(You can pre draw these boxes for a younger child, my almost 6 year old had a little trouble spacing his out and making each box big enough to draw a picture inside.)

Continuing with the Sharpie, draw simple sketches inside each box, titling each picture.  You might start with nouns, giving examples such as “House-ish” or “Dog-ish.” After nouns, we did feelings. “Sad-ish, Silly-ish.”

(You might help your younger child spell out his words.  I’m not big on correcting spelling, but with these it is more effective if you can easily read the titles-you’ll notice some mispelled words on the sample from our house, but the words were still decipherable.)

Finally, take your watercolors and enjoy filling in the pictures.  Watercolor is forgiving as it crosses lines.  It will look great. (Show your child how to blot extra paint or water with a paper towel.  Show him how to use more water than paint and then blot the brush on the towel before painting, to get a lighter color.)

You can also use black paint to add shadows along two sides of your boxes.

from the 8 year old-

From the 10 year old-

from the almost 6 year old-

From the Daddy year old-

From the Mommy year old-

These are completely addicting and very freeing if you keep in mind that they just have to be close-ish.

A few more examples:

News Worth Sharing

Didn’t I just say I was taking a break until next monday?

Well, we got news today that just had to be shared.

Do you remember that the girls worked very hard, over several weeks, on their stories and illustrations for the PBS Story Contest?

I’ve been watching the mail anxiously, hoping the girls would get rewarded for their hard work and also concerned for the letdown if one sister won and one sister didn’t.  That was the scenario a few years ago.  And of course the focus at our house is not on prizes, but I felt like this would be good timing for the girls to be affirmed in their efforts and talent outside of just mom and dad.

In the beginning, after they had written their stories I asked,

“Okay, how do you want to do your illustrations? Collage, colored pencil, water color?

“Acrylics,” they both agreed.

“Guys, really acrylics?  Are you sure?

“Yes.”

They learned very quickly how a sketch can change once you start layering on thick paint, especially in the fine details.  After 2 or 2 illustrations they were ready to give up.  But they pushed through and both felt proud of the final story and paintings.

So.  Today.  The mail.  I wondered if the girls would get big envelopes or slims ones.  From past experience, if you don’t win you receive your story and certificate in the mail.  But if you do win you get a slim envelope and your story is returned at the award ceremony.

Two slim envelopes!

Confident enough to be excited by now and not so worried I ran up the driveway with the letters and called the girls.

And the winners are…..

Mookie-Best Illustrator, 3rd grade

Jellybean-Best Illustrator, 2nd grade

Woo hoo!  The only two names on the whole winners list from the same family.  Two sisters pulled it off!

They deserved it.

The real reward for both of them will be much richer than a backpack of books and a trip to the theater.

A peek into their work-I’m going to let them read and record their stories and we’ll post the audio and illustrations after the awards.

Paul’s Great Adventure-by Mookie

How Quack Laid an Egg, by Jellybean

Congratulations, girls!

love, mama

Her Way

Jellybean did get back to the painting that she had envisioned.  I didn’t mention in my previous post that she saved the sketch that she had worked so hard on in order to do it her way and did another quick sketch to complete the Picasso project.

In the words of Jellybean herself as she admired the painting that inked it’s way from inside of her to the page,

“If I were a judge and this was a contest, I would give it first prize.”

She was happy with it.

(To see her original painting, the one she didn’t want to do, go here)

Picasso Goes Olympic

This week’s exploration of Picasso took us into his Blue Period.

Attempting to create an emotion with a color, we did this art project found through our Artist Study Guide.

The basic idea is to create a portrait with a strong black outline and then choose one color(with the addition of black and white available for a variety of shades) to fill in the areas.  There were three reactions:

9 year old mookie: Looked disappointed, as if the project wasn’t excited enough.  She ended up LOVING the project, see her artwork below.

7 year Jellybean: Had the same response she does with any project that has rules.  She bucked and procrastinated and finally agreed to make one portrait as the project directed and then do it her way with another portrait outline after we finished the first painting.  She will always resist learning technique but in the end she always adds the technique to her tool belt for her own endeavors.

4 year old Drummer Boy: The dear boy, this was probably a little advanced for him at the age when more color means more fun.  He did a fantastic drawing but then felt frustrated by the colors he was producing with his choice.  He ended up starting a new sketch and followed Mookie’s painting.  (Which was a compliment to mookie, but she was frustrated anyway).

And the outcome?

Jellybean(She’s completed the outline for the 2nd painting, but hasn’t painted it yet, I’ll try to post it when it’s done):

Mookie, inspired by the nights of watching the Olympics, grabbed the red.  We’re sending this one to Mr. Shaun White, Snowboarding Gold Medalist.

And Drummer Boy inspired by his big sister.(Do you see the eyes way at the top and he had to write Shaun’s name just like his sister).

This was a great project and very accessible for elementary age students.  I was itching to give it a try myself(I like the challenge of rules), but the baby on my back had other plans.