2nd Grade Fool-Proof Portraits!

     These easy portraits were a great way to wrap up the school year in 2nd grade at Brimfield.  I was inspired by the article "Contour Line Portraits; Excited About Artistic Abilities" from the March issue of Arts & Activities  of this year.  The article is written by Kari Gertz Neal and I loved the polished look of this tracing process that is so simple I feel like I should have thought of it myself!  I also found a very similar project over at Dali's Moustache that turned out awesome too.

    We've already done portraits and abstract paintings in 2nd grade this year, so the students were already familiar with the vocabulary and concepts for this project.  They chose either warm or cool colors and created abstract paintings (with Biggie Cakes) while I took their photographs one at a time.  During our next class we taped transparencies to the black and white photos that I printed for them and the students just traced all the details they could find with Sharpies.  To complete them we made nametag titles and stapled the tracings to the paintings.  The kids were amazed by how much their "drawings" really looked like them and I was really happy with the success the kids clearly felt with their work.