9 Weeks of work

I'm up later than I intended. I was actually already asleep but I got a phone call and I'm fully awake now. Before leaving school today I spent some time photographing some of my student's finished art projects. My 5th graders have worked on these monochromatic, abstract, self portraits for the last 9 weeks.

I wish I could frame them all before handing the projects back, they look great. We looked at the work of Pablo Picasso for inspiration. First by discussing his Rose and Blue Periods from his early work. Then by looking at examples of African masks which influenced his later work.
Each student had to create and abstracted self portrait, trace both their hands and add a patterned background. Overlapping and use of line to create mood were encouraged.
We spent a class period painting a value scale mixing tints and shades of one color/hue.
Each student chose the hue of their choice for their portrait. Having learned from teaching this lesson before, I had them start out by painting their largest shapes/areas with their hue. That gave them the opportunity to get used to working with tempera paint and handling the brushes.
In addition to the hue, they were required to mix a minimum of three tints and three shades. Thin and thick tipped black markers were used to outline all the shapes.

Some of the paintings are pretty expressive and just plain fun to look at. I'll share a few at a time in the next week.