This is a innovative way for teachers to get to know and engage students in literacy through art projects. This unconventional way of portraying oneself gives students an opportunity to reflect on who they are and introduce themselves to their teachers and peers. These projects provide opportunities to share vulnerabilities, find similarities and differences and have rich conversations.
Materials: white paper, pencils and eraser, mirror, markers, color pencils, or pastels
Directions:
1. Start with a sheet of white paper and fold in half vertically.
2. Look at the mirror. Determine whether your head is more round, oval or square.
3. Lightly sketch the outer edge of the head, neck and shoulders.
4. Add outline of hair.
5. Decide which half of the outline is a self-portrait and is a literal representation
6. Continue adding the details of the face on the side, referring to the mirror as necessary
7. Decide whether to add color and use additional materials like markers, colored pencils, or pastels.
8. On the other half of the self-portrait think about all your best qualities and things you want other people to know about you. After choosing these words, consider different ways you might creatively add text. Will you use your favorite color to write the words, will the words be in different fonts, will the words follow the contours of the face?
9. Now that one side of the portrait represents you with words and one side represents you without words and only your drawing, reflect on the factors that make you who you are. Write a paragraph about your masterpiece. What experiences have made you what you are today? What makes you special? What are things people don’t know about you? How do you want others to see you?
Building on this project: Additional ways that this project can be helpful is to create a portrait of a monster for Halloween or a portrait of a superhero. This will allow the student to use their imagination to build their own character, which will help with writing a story or after reading a story make a portrait of a favorite character from a book using this method.
Each student has a rich internal life and identity, and their portrait is like a book cover as the external portrait only shares a glimpse of the internal person or the messages, they say to themselves.
