Portraits continued...

This week the children chose the portrait that they preferred and put it on the overhead... its interesting to see how they choose, and it was not as I expected for both of them based on my observations of their process last week, but it was not an easy choice to make for that child either... she took her time in the selection process and changed her mind several times...

The children worked together to draw in pencil around the outlines... I encouraged them to check on the orginal on the overhead to see if they had indeed drawn the same image. They were amazed at how big the portraits had become.

Once both portraits were drawn in pencil they started to colour in the outlines with black paint...
There did not seem to be any system of top to bottom or left to right, or eyes then nose etc... it was totally random... a bit of hair, half an eye, an ear then some more hair... etc etc

When the portraits were finished we stood and looked at them for a while, but only a while, they were keen to use colour... so they got to use the bright acrylics on the plastic portrait. I turned the portrait over so that they could paint on the reverse and experiment with colours, pointing out how the lins would not disappear on the other side...

One of the girls was interested in painting layers - even though I pointed out that these layers would not be so noticeable on the other side... we looked a few times, so she could see, but painting the details, layer upon layer, was important to her and she continued, and she could feel the satisfaction of her art process.

checking how the image was the same on the OH as it was on the wall... even though it was a different size

 The various processes of the morning. This was an activity that the children enjoyed immensly were able to sustain a long period of concentration.

The rest of the group came in from their outdoor play and closely inspected the two new faces on the wall...