Summer Art Challenge 2020: Self Portraits

There is something about summer (even in the midst of a pandemic) that I really just love.  It's more quiet and relaxed.  There's more time for creativity and rest.  It's been pretty great.  In many ways, my kids are experiencing the same summer they normally have despite society kind of hunkering down where we live.  This means we are doing art and lots of it.  This week we moved along in our Summer Art Challenge to Self Portraits. 

Self Portraits are always fun because kids get a chance to draw themselves.  They get to play with making shapes to form their eyes, decide if they want eye lashes or not (my boys decided that despite their long, beautiful eye lashes drawing them looked like a girl. . .. boys!). 

We started out with just a simple video tutorial on how to draw ourselves from the chest up (I'll link it at the bottom).  The kids had to push pause every now and then so they could do what she asked them to do, but it worked.  They turned out great!   We used pencils to draw and crayons to color.  Super simple. 

Later in the week, we took a different approach to Self Portraits.  We did it Abstract style.  I really wanted to keep with the same simple pencil and crayon approach as we did with our earlier self portraits, but change it up again.  We talked about what we had learned last year when we studied Picasso and then got to see a lot of his creations at the National Art Gallery.  We talked about bold colors, strange shapes, and how they don't look realistic at all. 

We used another tutorial (this time not a video) found on Pinterest (why recreate the wheel?).  It was simple and left room for lots of vibrant colors.  This one was super easy also, but we decided that the colors popped more when we outlined everything in black . . . such a simple thing, but an incredible difference. 

And that's a wrap for this week's Summer Art Challenge.  Have you been taking time to get creative?  I can't tell you how much it does a heart good in the midst of all the crazy!  Plus, I love the memories and conversations that are made from these art times! 

If you are doing them, I'd love to hear from you.  Feel free to tag @outoftherightbrain on facebook or @jolieklassen on instagram. . . or use the hashtag #ootrbsummerartchallenge.

It's a joy to my heart to be able to blog here, but also I get so much encouragement seeing what you all are creating! 

Have a great weekend!

Links:

Self Portrait Video Tutorial

Abstract self Portrait tutorial

More Picasso Art