These super-hero self portraits turned out so fabulously I had to share them. The original goal of the project was to give the kids a chance to practice communicating through their art, -to tell a story. I also wanted them to begin identifying different art styles and characteristics of said styles.
I knew to make this work, I was going to have to teach the kids about foreshortening. So.. let's be honest, that's a 9thish grade skill and these are 4th graders, but I didn't fill them in on that piece of information.
I gave the kids some handouts of popular superheros and heroins (that's important friends!) and told them to practice drawing. I let them trace once, then draw.
We talked about the pictures. I asked them what they all had in common. They were able to identify the foreshortening pretty easily ("there is stuff popping-out." "there's always a big thing"). YAY!We were off to a great start. Also, the kids were so excited about drawing comics, they weren't worried about the difficulty.
Next, I took a picture of each kid in a foreshortening friendly pose and printed it for them. I gave the kids a 9x12 piece of paper and a 12x18 piece of paper. I told them to draw whatever "popped-out" of their photograph (foot, fist, hand) on the 9x12 paper and it had to take up the whole paper. Then they drew their bodies on the 12x18 paper. THey cut out what they drew on the 9x12 and glued it onto the drawing of their bodies.
After that, the kids added details and backgrounds, turning themselves into awesome superheros. The pictures were outlined in black, and colored in primary colors.
Finally, the kids added an onomatopoeia bubble that they created from construction paper. Early finishers had a chance to write a story about their character.
