We started the year with self-portraits

and I am… statements as part of our identity study. We practiced mixing skin tones in conjunction with the 3rd grade class work.

We looked at a variety of self-portraits. We talked about why artists make self portraits and how the tradition has continued for more than 500 years. We practiced close observational drawing and discussed the basic proportions of the human face and how to measure the different features.

We thought about the questions:

What are the steps you took to make your self-portrait?

What is the most remarkable thing about making your self portrait?

What is the most remarkable thing about the self portraits we looked at.

We practiced mixing skin tones. We discovered that all skin tones are made by using the same colors in varying amounts.

We studied the work of Anna Atkins (March 16, 1799-1871). Atkins was a trained botanist and created the first photographic book using the cyanotypes. A cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print. Engineers used the process well into the 20th century as a simple and low-cost process to produce copies of drawings. We watched a few videos about Atkins and we read The Bluest of Blues. We made botanical drawings, cyanotypes and observational drawings of shells.

We practiced close looking and made observational drawings of wild flowers.

We pressed our specimens for our future cyanotypes.

We made cyanotypes.

We made observational drawings of shells. We focused on color, pattern, repetition and form.