More Portraiture

Sixth graders have finished work on their portraits and began assessment today.  I'm really impressed with everyone's effort during this unit.  Our learning goals were to draw a realistic portrait that demonstrates proper proportion and placement of facial features and to use value to show form.  Students completed a variety of practice exercises before starting on their final portrait which the drew from a black and white photo reference.
In looking back over their work today I found a couple of pre- instruction portraits tucked into sketchbooks and I'm posting them   too so you can see the growth and progress.

If you are looking for some good links to use in teaching pencil portraits their a lots of great videos on YouTube that will help students get started and don't forget to check out Mr. Curkovic's  link.  Lot's of great info, plus a solid rubric.

Paige After

Paige Before

Brendan's After

Brendan's before

Sixth Grade Self-Portraits

Sixth graders are finishing up their self-portraits this week and I'm really proud of their progress.  Our focus has been on proportion, placement, and value in drawing realistic portraits.  We did a lot of work in our sketchbooks where we created a value scale, and practiced drawing individual facial features.  The final project was to create a realistic self-portrait using what we had learned.  To create these, students began by toning the paper lightly with their pencil.  They worked from a similar size black and white photo.  To help with placement students folded their photo two ways and drew corresponding lines on their paper dividing it into four blocks.  Working with one feature at a time students found they could use the center point as a handy reference for placing things correctly on the page.  The lines were erased out as the went along.
Nice job sixth grade.