Things Organized Neatly- Self Portrait in Objects

Next up in art challenges that don't require art supplies, Things Organized Neatly- Self Portrait in Objects! I came across #ThingsOrganizedNeatly last year and used it as a challenge for Photo Friday last fall, but then my KAEA friend, Nicky Bowers gave me an idea to add the self-portrait element after she had her students arrange and photograph at 15 objects that represented them.

While some students didn't understand the concept of composition and kind of just threw the items in a pile, some understood and did a good job. I think if we happen to be online next year, I will probably give a handful of choices instead of ALL THE CHOICES at once so we can go over the concepts behind each one.

Some of the high school students included a list of objects and the reasoning for including them and that was interesting to read!

This post includes work from middle and high school students. I think it worked well with both age groups.

Using Photos to Test Composition

During the "Story" unit that my intro class had last spring, one student wanted to paint a portrait of a book character who had a butterfly shaped birthmark on her shoulder. As I talked to her about her plan she said she planned to paint the girl facing away so it was visible. I asked if she'd thought about having her head turned. She was having a hard time picturing what I was talking about so I whipped out my smart phone and was able to quickly take a picture of her first idea as well as the suggestion I offered. She compared and chose the version with the head turned since it sort of pulls the viewer in. It was an easy way to help her visualize the options.

2nd grade Painting with Scissors

 I like to use Matisse to teach 2nd graders about shape. The last 2 years we've spent time learning about Matisse and his artwork, then the students used construction paper to create their compositions. Some of the students did a nice job but most struggled with the idea of overlapping while maintaing some sort of balance. (Gluing so many layers that you can no longer see the cut shapes was common.) To try to remedy that we painted the background with paint and created the foreground by painting with scissors.

Source: youtube.com via Katie on Pinterest

The first class period was spent on introduction- we watched the video of Matisse painting with scissors, above, then a PPT presentation of his artwork- and creating the background. The students used rulers (if they wanted) to divide their 9x12 inch paper into geometric shapes. The students were given tempera paint in the primary colors to fill in their spaces. In the second class period, the students used construction paper scraps to make organic shapes. When we discussed Matisse's artwork, the students liked to point out "ish" shapes since we had recently read the book by Peter H. Reynolds. I asked that one of their organic shapes be an "ish" shape and some could just be free form. The students this year actually did a pretty good job controlling their glue but some still can not understand (or choose to ignore) the "just a dot, not a lot" reminder. :)

This student missed the first day so I asked her to start by selecting some large geometric shapes to glue down before moving on to organic shapes.