Kim from Chifley Preschool in Canberra, challenged her children to make a self portrait with a difference.

First, looking in a mirror, the children were invited to draw their faces.

The instruction was to just do their faces and what they could actually see, but the instructions didn’t get in the way of a good time!

When they had drawn their self portraits, they were then encouraged to choose from a range of collage materials to make a second self portrait.

This time they were restricted to use only collage materials and glue with no drawing implements.

The resulting portraits are just wonderful!!

Look at those gorgeous earrings (which she wasn’t actually wearing that day)!

We really like how they were displayed side by side.

Creativity using the children’s favourite person as the basis - themselves!

Another irresistible  idea to complement these Self Portraits and these Self Portraits and even More Portraits, which we have posted about before!

A while ago we were discussing lots of different styles of art with the children and one of the things they really enjoyed creating were self portraits. This week we invited the children to draw portraits of their friends.

We provided a couple of old picture frames for the ‘model’ to hold it up in front of their face.

Our ‘artist’ was asked to study what they could see inside the frame.

We saw some very gorgeous interpretations of …

what was “inside the frame”!

Some of our children however really got the concept of “inside the frame”!

It was lovely to see how carefully they studied their subject.

Taking in things like hair styles …

eye colour …

details on clothing.

We were really impressed by what we were seeing.

WOW … How irresistible is that?!

One of the activities the children love to do on Grandparents’ Day is to draw, then paint their special visitors’ portraits.

They had a practice doing it with their friends the session before. The subjects sat across from the artists and held an empty frame up in front of their faces.

The artist drew what they could see inside the frame (or their interpretation of inside the frame) in permanent black felt tip pen.

Then they painted it in water colours …

… and they were absolutely beautiful!

Next session it was our  grandparents’ and special visitors’ turn to be artistically represented.

As the water paints dry so quickly, they were able to proudly bear their priceless gifts home when they left.

Some children barely looked at their subject … but just drew away and included their subjects’ whole body.

While other artists carefully studied everything about their subject and included such details as the picture frame, maybe a pair of glasses, even earrings or a freckle …

… even accounting for the details on their clothing.

It is so interesting to see what diverse stages the children are at!