Session Eight: Observation & Looking for Self Portraits

March 9th 2017

Aim: To really look at the proportions of the face. To sit still and observe rather than get inside of things – not moving the furniture about!

I decided for sessions 8 & 9 we will not be moving the furniture about. We focused on staying seated for most of the time together for this session and again for our next session. Our aim will be to create self-portraits that will become the walls of the cubes. I am amused at how frequently I have been using the postal system for this project especially as it is a Virtually There initiative. I also feel that Ms Harriott’s photographs on her journal far better capture the activity in the classroom than mine.

In the package I sent there were a number of drawings demonstrating how to create a portrait of both a child and of an adult. I also had plenty of props available a balloon the same size as my own head and an egg as it depicts the perfect human head shape and is always interesting for the children. I enjoyed the process of demonstrating how to draw the proportions of the human head. It was a great exercise for me to revisit this. I also knew that the children had done some work with Ms Harriott in the beginning of the academic year so I had a head start.

The children are always very eager to follow my instruction and are always very focused form where I am sitting. As the children worked away I also continued sketching portraits and I admit mine could do with some practice. I wanted us to do quite a lot of practice before we would draw the self-portraits onto the acetate. I had sent 30 sheets of acetate, overhead marker pens, an assortment of coloured cellophane and coloured transparent sticky contact in the package. I had thought that we would get to drawing the self-portraits onto the sheets of acetate in this session but we applied ourselves to observation and drawing each other.

 

Throughout the session the children came and showed me their drawings. Unfortunately as the pencils were done in pencil on paper it was really difficult to see what the children had done. Ms Harriott took lots of photos so I was able to see things more clearly on her blog after the session. I was quite impress at how quickly the children’s drawings progressed as the practiced a little more. Before finishing up we did a quick fun activity where I asked the children to draw the child opposite without looking at the paper. The task was to look only at the other child’s face and draw them whilst continuing to look at them and not at the paper. Some children found this quite challenging but it was great fun and I love what the children produced.

For a little homework I asked the children to practice drawing themselves and to draw different members of their families.

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