Layered Self-Portrait

The 6 years old students (4-5 international) learned about creating layers when making art (I wonder if any of them will remember this when they get older and work with design and photo editing programs). I showed them how we can use layers to build a picture. I also taught them what is the difference between a portrait and a self-portrait. We saw many images of portraits and self-portraits. I gave them an example by drawing one of their friends and drawing myself to help them visualize the difference. 

First, we drew a big circle or shape that best resembled the shape of our face. On a separate piece of paper, students drew their hair, eyes, nose, mouth and ears. I reminded them to draw big. I also taught them to use shapes to guide them as they draw eyes and nose. I showed them mouths I had seen them draw during the year and explained why these drawings weren't accurate representations of our mouths. 

Students painted all the parts of their face with acrylic and watercolors. Once they dried up, students cut them up, and glued them on to small Styrofoam pieces to help dramatize the space between layers. Students cut up small pieces of brown paper bags to help create texture in their hair. 

The self-portraits needed a final touch so we added red circles to represent our cheeks. This was a great project and it took us four 45 minute long classes to complete.